A Memorial for the People
by Ganimyde
Summary: They have all been through so much, but what do they truly mean to each other? What will they make this new world into? AC anime ep 10. Action-adventure; main: Ed, Al, Hughes, Roy, Hawkeye, Havoc.
1. Chapter 1: Introduction

**Title: **_Fullmetal Alchemist: A Memorial for the People _(Lol, so socialist. Oh well.)

**Rating**: PG, R later.

**Pairings:** Slight Roy x Riza

**Warnings**: Crazy. And more Crazy. Much Cackling.

**Summary**: AU, inspired ~ep 10. Anime-Verse; no spoilers. There are themes of death in this, both soldier and civilian. It's an action flick, but it has its heavy philosophical moments, too. More of the action, though. :)

**AUHTOR'S VERY IMPORTANT NOTE(S):** Sooo, after much complaining and years of mustering the courage to do so, **I've gone back and fixed up this first chapter **(it was written much earlier than the rest of the story). It is much better now, tolerable at least. xD Also, the first chapter is backstory and setup. The second chapter is setup to the explosions (and is short). Once you make it to the third chapter, you'll most likely be hooked. If you stay to the end, you'll probably be crying(see reviews of ch11). It only gets better and better.

**+ Also: Bradley. **This diverges at ep 10, so obviously Bradley was a small side character at that point. I realize that if you've read to the end of the manga, the government is entrenched very heavily in cannon verse, and prepared for the sort of coup outlined here. Please suspend your disbelief for me here. (I can't believe I'm asking people to suspend their disbelief for a _fanfic _of an _anime _about _scientific magic_. LOL, oh well.) Though it may be good to remember: Argentina, Germany, Poland, Great Britain in the past, France, Malaysia, and many other nations' governments have been overturned in just a few days, or over night.

**+Also #2:** Why anarchists, rather than some cannon character? I debated this a lot and I went with the way it was originally: anarchists fit in with the symbolism that goes along with, "the lawlessness and chaos of spirit ones goes into when overcome by grieving." Thank you for your understanding on that matter. :3

Please enjoy the read. I feel that the epilogue of this story is my masterpiece to this date, odd as that is to say. When you get there, you'll understand why.

* * *

_Edward's gold eyes glinted in the light, the single sliver they had from under the door. The one arm Ed had was affixed to the wall and it was decidedly broken. He could only talk in the sound of the guard's steps as he approached, nothing more, nothing less. It had taken hours just to determine the appropriate decibel level. It accounted for about half of his bruises._

_ "If I don't get out of this," he said over two trips of the guard, "Find Al."_

_ "What if neither of us get out of this?" Roy asked back an hour later, from his cloak of darkness across the narrow hall._

_ He smiled, a grim wickedness. "Then Al finds us."_

Dead or alive.

_ Not an hour later, Edward and several nameless others went through the archway of feathery white that was the end of their prison. It was the way to the crucifixion; it was the way to the end._

_ And Mustang was left behind._

_ Caged, and faced with a choice: Move now, and know he died trying to save him. Or he could die later, and tell himself it was for a chance to save those behind him._

_ Those gold eyes were still staring, as he was swallowed by the light._

_

* * *

Fullmetal Alchemist: _

_A Memorial for the People_

Chapter 1: Intro

* * *

When Mustang awoke, half the items from his desk lay scattered about the floor.

He lay with his face against the wood, eyes fixed on the clock cloaked in shadows. He could still feel where that bullet hit him, and where it had come out the other side.

He drew a gloved hand over his face. That dream always got to him on nights like this, nights alone at the office.

The night was still; nothing in his view moved. Somewhere off to the side, the heat clumsily worked up steam to disperse, a series of ominous clanks and clunks within the walls.

He closed his eyes, tuning out the noise so like the distant, bored clanking of Edward's leg against the bars.

_The critical days where everything had fallen apart. . . ._

No one had known what had happened to Al after they had been initially caught. Many ranking officers had been abducted separately, though within a few short hours. The story Ed told about his brother, as he lay seething and battered blue on the cold concrete of his cell, blood from his nose coloring the ground, was that the last time he saw the boy was as he was flat on the ground in an alley with a gun to his head, screaming at him to run away.

No one was aware at the time of why they were even still alive. It was a coup, carried out with bloody precision. State Alchemists were housed in their tunnel; later, groups of civilian prisoners were stuffed into the empty cells around them.

They came, and they went, and there was no food. They were underground somewhere, and at the end of a long set of stairs leading upward was The Door. It was only upon the third day, when one of the guards left the door to white light open, that they heard what was going on above ground.

The story of one of the late-arriving and quickly-leaving prisoners didn't help.

Something about it had shifted Edward's stability from the proverbial shelf. He had remained hopeful that his brother would rescue them, as all of them were tied hand and foot, unable to move, with no way to transmute. However, knowing that execution was directly outside their door wormed into Edward's heart, and his resolve crumbled over time, especially after the next set of prisoners had been marched out, never to return.

Whereas Roy's resolve hardened, by virtue of having been in such situations before, in Ishbal. Ed's fire broke down, too convinced that Al had been eliminated when Ed had been caught, and was laying dead in the street exactly where he'd last seen him, flesh and blood and all.

Flesh which had been regained just three days prior to their parting.

The thoughts unraveling Ed's mind were difficult to watch, but when Mustang found out the terrorism with which the coup holding the city, Mustang was sucked into worrying, too, because Al was their only hope.

When the commander was infected, that was when it was time to worry. And everything could only go downhill from there.

The heat came on finally with a hiss, steam leaking out through radiator caps. The whole building seemed to be shuddering with a groan against the darkness outside the mammoth windows at his back.

He still remembered Hawkeye crying over the wound he finally did achieve on Ed's behalf, rattling the guards to try to create a diversion. One that did absolutely nothing.

Ed was gone, and he was left bleeding in his cell.

And then Al had come.

He saved many lives, undoubtedly, but had come too late to prevent that sort of anguish. The day that they were to be executed and strung up in the streets in front of a crowd of several thousand captive Centralites, an explosion ripped through the crowd and plunged everything into chaos. The upset, however, along with its tiny force of resistance fighters, mustered indeed by Alphonse Elric, was not great enough to get the one thing Al wanted: the touch of his brother.

The Alchemists had been freed, but the ones already strung up were unable to be reclaimed. There was shooting that day, deaths, but it was something that they couldn't worry about at the time. All that mattered was getting out, so that they return later.

They all knew this. It was only Alphonse and Armstrong who could not accept it.

It was a decision that nearly broke the resistance, because, by the time enough regrouped force was mustered to start a second assault some days later, the Fuhrer was gone and Ed was nearly dead. For three days, by then, he had been strung up in Central's town square, on a frame high enough so that all the crowd could see, wasting away in front of their eyes when they ventured close enough to see. He had been guarded like a lion's fresh kill, and with him, the Flame, out of commission . . . He could still remember Al crying to be metal again so that he could save his brother without a hint of thought about himself.

"Bastards." The word came into his memory, possibly his, possibly Al's, anyone else's that had hid in their blown-out hovel or cursed at the circumstances in the years since. _It was funny, Fullmetal, _he thought, the words appearing reflexively to distance himself from what he really felt. _You were just the way you always were, even tortured in front of the whole town to see._

When they hung him up there, extra ropes tied around his shoulders so that he would last longer, what did he say?: "You'll never get the best of me, you bastards; try to take Central. The people won't let you!"

In the silence that followed, the man in charge raised his long-barreled rifle and, with a bang that shook the city, put a bullet in Ed's head. The base of his skull; it slipped in the back, lodged somewhere near his spinal cord, and left him bleeding for days. He was conscious for a while, they said, and it seemed to take away his pain for the words that immortalized him in the people's minds:

"Don't let them get you, kids," he had laughed to the witless, round-faced six-year-olds of the town that had been rounded up at his feet for the next example slaughter and had his blood splattered over them. He forced himself to focus on the traumatized eyes of those children, so many feet below him, and watched a rivulet of blood come in and out of focus as it fell the distance between him and where it splashed upon a child's cheek. He smiled. "I'll save you, Central. . . ."

It was as if the whole world had seen that drop, and it was just as well: that was the last thing he had said, ever. He's been made a spectacle of by the anarchists, and was a last view for those slaughtered at his feet. By then, the pavilion stairs were running red. Though, no matter how hard he and the government resistance were hanging on to life, even the small glimmer of life he showed had ceased after so many absolutely disastrous tries to not only save him, but order as well.

When the Fuhrer was finally found and executed, it seemed as though the end was upon their tries. There was no crucifixion for him, like the others in the square and around town. No; he had been killed in what could only be called an incredibly noble and strong-willed public execution. They knew what they were doing; leaving him would have been motivating, whereas killing him broke the back of the people like nothing else could. The day after, all was quiet. Nothing moved.

Obviously, no one in the military knew what to do, and "Mustang's" group, the largest contingent of officers remaining, was the only one that could bring about any more important resistance. And it was because of Mustang that they did. After a nasty patch-job, he was barely able to breathe, barely able to stand, but he took their fears and filled them with the idea that now, now they couldn't lose; they couldn't give up, because what was the Fuhrer's sacrifice for? The terrorists could have their way, if his badgered forces wanted to hide in here forever and have everyone in Central's head on their conscience for not fighting like the fuhrer asked them to. They were all going to die eventually, so why not do it fighting for something? The group, demoralized, could hold on to nothing else. _And if there's nothing else, _he'd said, _We're going to get Ed back._

By that point, the Fullmetal Alchemist's presence was something the terrorists had practically forgotten about, aware of the effect his prostrated form was having on the city, and therefore not desiring to do anything else about it. He may have been dead, for all anyone knew, but corpse or not, Colonel Mustang made him his rallying point. Sure, Armstrong and Al each felt the urge and the ability to take the whole army themselves, but it was proving harder with each passing day. Maybe Mustang had commanded this final effort because they all held the unvoiced hope that if he, Roy, could be more than barely conscious for five minutes, or if they had Ed's foolhardy invincibility, they could do something that would turn the takeover around, in one long charge. Yet, perhaps it was because he felt personally guilty for not being able to save Edward beforehand. Maybe, it was that they had put too many losses into his rescue to turn back now, and if they managed to get Ed down, he could go home and die in peace. In any event, there was a truth: He couldn't die yet, because he couldn't leave his men behind.

. . . And poor Alphonse.

The fourth day. . . . That was when it happened. Their hiding place was found out, all of those remaining alchemists with him. It had been set up that way, to draw forces and attention away from Ed. Mustang had barely been well enough to attempt anything more than moving, propped up over Hawkeye's capable shoulders, but that was all he had been waiting for, those past three days of hell.

So easily it was, that everything could fall apart. The world was already nothing but piles of rubble for them to fight meaninglessly over.

So they went, in different directions, different groups, with all the strength they had, to rally the people, and they did. But it had been the most gruesome close-quarters, civilian-combat battle Mustang had ever seen.

And in the middle of it all, Al had found his brother. Through a hailstorm of bullets he scribbled on the ground until a transmutation that the people still remembered brought his brother into his arms.

_He's still warm!_

That golden spiral that rallied the reinforcements also showed the militants where to fire through the debris cloud. Mustang, waiting in the wings, giving orders from a nearby blasted building, had over-compensated the difference to deflect a bomb and exploded a building straight onto Ed and Al. If it hadn't been for that, though, there wouldn't have been anything left of them, at all.

The heightened hell that ensued did not stop him, however, and he led a charge that finally forced the terrorists back. Bleeding freely, he led a ring of people to dig frantically through the rubble to find where the brothers' bodies might be. Yet, all he could remember thinking, half-delirious from blood loss as he was, was what would happen if he lost all of what he cared about.

He never wondered when it was that they had become so much more important than himself.

A boulder of concrete was thrown over, and in a ray of sunshine like no one had seen in days, they were there, in a pocket, shimmering in gold, untouched but by a pallor of grime and concrete dust. As light sparkled off the dust settling in the air, no one breathed, unwilling to disturb the sight of Al hunched over Ed, and even unconscious, Ed's arms around him.

Horribly transfixed on Ed as he had been, Mustang was never sure if he had ever noticed Al opening his eyes happily, through the haze of pain, or if he was simply filling in gaps.

_"Colonel, he's alive."_

He would remember that moment for the rest of his life, like most people did, through one rumor or another.

But was it worth it? Al hadn't let himself notice the sticky blood that coated his hand as he held the back of Ed's head next to his, he was so relieved to have him back; he even had this martyred, "I can die happy now" look as he passed out again.

But fate wouldn't be so kind. Lifting his head, Roy looked toward the note he had received yesterday. It anonymous, small, red. He swept it into his hand, considered it, and started twirling the thick paper over his fingers. It had been six years now, six years tomorrow, since Al had practically left with Edward in his arms, the Edward that had been unconscious for weeks before that. No one knew where they went, where he ended up, not Risembool, not the east, not Ishbal; all had been searched for any last terrorist, and, surely, any sign of them would've appeared.

No, he sighed, the Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero of the People and stubborn as a mule, and his brother, the most strong-willed and pacifistic person he had ever met, both disappeared, and no one here let the idea that they were both dead or disposed rule over anything else. The people just wanted to believe, after such heroism, that he was still alive; there could be no other way, they said, and every year around this time, because of the collective memory of that heroism they all experienced one way or another, the people would try to find him, bring in frauds of him, and even hold ceremonies in his honor.

Someday, they all expected him to come back, their idol.

Mustang's eyes softened as he held up the small rectangle. They called Ed their idol, Al their savior, and him their leader. Yet, for all the responsibility that had been placed on him to debunk the frauds, he wanted to believe, too, that Ed and Al were still alive; he really did, and he had the feeling that nothing could ever kill those boys, after what they'd been through. Still, on lesser days, he wondered: was it because of some pre-determined fate, some equivalent exchange that Ed was meant to die, but was just too stubborn to and so ended up a body without a living, breathing soul? He had no information to go off of, so he could only conjecture upon his own feelings, and the pessimistic ones told him that a lot could happen in six years—a lot of people could _die _in six years' time.

He sighed, resting his cheek against the heel of his palm and frowning at the white lilies on his desk. It was all so sad. He was distanced from it, and yet it had power like it was yesterday.

_You weren't supposed to die before me, and yet you still went and did it._

That was why he was forced to make an observance—no one else could let go of their unavenged griefs, either, be it the large following of Edward and Alphonse or people who simply had lost too many children to the insurgents. So now there was a holiday, the People's Memorial, starting tomorrow; a three-day memorial for Ed, for Al, and everyone else, symbolically: the first day for the wounded, those still afflicted; the second, for survivors, those taking care; and the third for the remembered, the ones left behind, those who lost their lives. This was also known as Fuhrer's Day, to remember the late Fuhrer Bradley. Roy let himself smile quietly. And maybe, just maybe, his _own _valor, too. . . .

He traced his eyes up the curve of the light pink vase that held the flowers, memories playing before his eyes. If only he could reclaim the good days.

He placed one gloved finger atop the red message and slid it across his desk to flip it over.

_Don't forget._

That was all it said.

He glared at it. He was probably the one that carried around the most guilt about the whole event in the entire country. He and Al both. He could still remember that boy crying, partly because his new body still hurt; partly because his world was falling apart. . . .

For an instant, there was the faint blue flare in the crack below the door, and then heavy footfall in the hallway beyond his chambers. The energy tingled through his spine unconsciously.

Roy slid the note away and hid one of his hands behind his desk, like he always did when edgy. There was a knock at the door, so far across the room, to the side.

"Yes? Come in."

It felt overdone to be so wary, but this time of year, and this late at night. . . . The guards were out there, of course, but . . .

"Hello," a tall figure in uniform purred, coming in the room and saluting gently. When Mustang waved him down, his arm fell to the side, and he tilted his head to the side.

Roy narrowed his eyes. There was something familiar about the voice, but the room was so dark that his face was covered in shadow. Damn, he should've turned some kind of light on rather than just relying on the street lamps outside the grand window behind him again. Hawkeye always told him off about that. "You'll ruin your eyes!" was her favorite scold.

Still, the young man was wearing an officer's uniform, so it couldn't have been anything too bad. Unless it was extremely bad.

He stopped a foot in front of Mustang's desk, then slammed his hands down. Roy's eyes were diverted until the youth pushed his face into the light, directly in front of his superior's. His eyes were wide and glinting, and he hissed as his shadow overtook the man.

"Remember _me, Fuhrer _Mustang?"

"Al?"

"That's _right!" _He launched himself at Mustang with a maniacal look in his eyes and in a flash of red, the sound of shattering glass accompanied the sensation of flying through the air.

With a sharp blow of pain cutting through the burning streaks of glass-shard cuts, he lost his air and his eyes spun; more than one thing cracked loudly. Before he could catch his senses back, someone heavier was on top of him, fingers locked in between his own and holding his hands down by his ears. Mustang's brain screamed at him to move, but the messages were muddled; with horror, he found himself was completely pinned.

"Do you remember me, _too, _Colonel Mustang?" the man cried, flexing his hands as he put more pressure on Roy's broken bones. Mustang sucked in a sharp breath, moaning.

"Look!" his attacker growled violently. _"Look _at what you've done to me! It's because of you that I still have this bullet in my brain!"

He snarled and dug his teeth into Mustang's shoulder, his long hair flying everywhere as his head came down. A thin, hot spray of blood speckled Mustang's neck and he tipped his head back with gritted teeth, his ringing cry raw and strained.

A shot went off behind him. The high-pitched whine of a bullet grazed his attacker's head, flinging his thick ponytail back. The man darted from him, growling and then dodging two more bullets.

_"Die, _dammit!" Hawkeye yelled.

"No, stop firing!" he cried, sitting up and throwing his arm out to stop them, even though he fell right back down in doing so.

"Tomorrow, Mustang! Tomorrow!" yelled the man as he darted around the corner, cackling.

"After him!" Hawkeye ordered, and then rushed to her Fuhrer's side as several sets of military-issue boots went the other.

Mustang held the back of his head absentmindedly as he stared twenty feet up at the broken window, while Hawkeye frantically put her arms around him. That should have killed him, he should have hit his head and had it splattered on the pavement. He may have just been imagining it, but had that man brushed the back of his head to keep it from hitting the ground?

Hawkeye was saying something. What did he look like? She hadn't been able to see. He was wearing a military uniform—did he know who it was?

"Blond hair . . ." he began before he could stop himself, shaking terribly. "All the way down his back, in a ponytail, and his arm . . ." He touched his hand, remembering what it had felt like. Slowly, he turned his shocked gaze up to the woman. ". . . Elrics . . . ?" he muttered wonderously.

Hawkeye only stared at him, and then looked down the alley. "It _can't _be. . . ."

* * *

A/N: Lol, crazy. I told you there'd be cackling. And biting. Didn't I mention the biting? No? Well, now you've seen it. _And you can't unsee it!_

Don't take the mellowdramatic parts _too _seriously. They are mello-drama, after all. XD

Thanks for reading. Keep going, you can do it! ^_^


	2. Chapter 2: The Days that Stand Alone

"It can't be him. It just can't _be_," Mustang muttered again to himself. "It can't be."

"Fuhrer." Hawkeye held up the letter.

_It just _can't_ be._

"Could it?" His dark eyes pierced through his steepled hands up to the woman.

She looked off, thinking in her stoic way, rather than purposefully avoiding his gaze. It was a strength of character he'd always admired her for.

"It could be . . ."

On the wall of a dark alley, there was a message scrawled in red, now etched into their minds.

". . . but I doubt it."

_Tomorrow is the beginning, Roy Mustang! Are you ready for your judgment by devils of red?_

"And yet . . ."

_It's got to be._ Mustang's head slipped through his hands and he finally straightened up, rising to his feet. "I'm sorry, Ed." The paper crumpled in his tightened fist. "But you're dead to me now. You have to be."

* * *

II: THE DAYS THAT STAND ALONE 

_A. The Reverie_

Admitting Ed was dead wasn't the hard part; what was hard was admitting that he had to move on. Move on, because, really, it _had_ been too long to hold out hope of any kind for Ed's successful return to them; move on, meaning kill this . . . _thing_that was plaguing him_—them_. . . . Because he was Fuhrer; he had to be strong for them.

"You think he's really going to show?" Fuery wondered as Mustang parted a slit in the massive curtains that led onto a make-shift stage in the pavilion. "I mean, in front of all these people, and with all the added security? The whole _army's_practically here!"

"That's exactly it, isn't it, Fuhrer?" Armstrong speculated lowly from behind them. "There are so many people, such a large force that, though quite a deterrent, can't effectively move to apprehend just one person?"

Mustang let out a small grunt as he glared out onto the scene. Like he was actually going to see him peering through a hole like this. He just had to go out there, speak like planned, and wait. He checked one last time to make sure everyone was in place.

"Even still," Havoc cautioned, "he'd be totally crazy to come out and try for your life today. All the State Alchemists in the world are up here, for crying out loud!"

"Yeah, but Ed was always one for surprises, wasn't he?" he mumbled darkly. He stepped forward, adrenaline ready for anything, but Havoc caught his shoulder and sent it jolting uncontrollably through his system.

Havoc's grave face did nothing to help him. "You _really_think it's him?"

Roy's jaw tightened. "Yeah."

A wry smile tweaked across Havoc's face. "Good. Then he'll listen to reason." His friend shrugged free of his hands and turned, the cue come. "And if he doesn't," he continued to Roy's back, "We'll kick his ass. Right Major?"

His face fell when he looked to Armstrong, and saw a scowl quite unlike anything he had ever seen on the muscle-bound officer's face before.

"That's pretty much something, isn't it?" Fury asked as he watched Roy stroll out onto the huge stage, "That he's Furher now?"

Havoc studied the billowing of the cloaks and capes Mustang was wearing, and how he carried himself in times like these. To Fuery, he scoffed. "Yeah, him and his _broken ribs_."

"What?!" the younger man cried in alarm. "No one ever told me about that!"

Havoc smiled. "We're doin' some ass-kickin', today, no matter what."

"Are you really sure about this?" Hawkeye demanded lowly as Mustang took his place behind the podium, just to her right.

"I can't stop this now," he answered, from the corner of his mouth, over the din of the crowd.

"Yes you can!" she begged, losing her composure and turning her head.

He gave her a reproving leer sharply, but disguised it as looking over the V-formation of alchemists extending out on either side of him. "The people need this, Hawkeye; you know they do."

He turned forward. "And I can't stop it, no matter what."

Hawkeye lowered her head and frowned. "So you're feeling guilty about getting this far, when the boys—"

"People of Central," his speech started, "we are assembled here today to show each other what we have lost, to help each other with wounds that will not seem to heal, and to —"

_He stepped forward_,

"—give each other the support we need. Because we are human, and we cry when we have lost."

_from the shadowed walls,_

"We feel pain when we have suffered,"he continued,

_moving out into the crowd;_

"And give hope when we have call for it."

_A solitary figure,_

"Yet, though the times have changed, grieving, we still gather here. We come, but to no apparent ends."

_Through the colorful fields of changing people,_

"But Humans also _heal._Today we come, remembering, but there comes a time when remembering becomes past-tense, and life spirals on. Even if we cannot feel whole again, I hope that, now,"

_He came, too, changing, but still the same in his heart._

"we will realize there are still people_ here, _living,_ breathing_ beings that come from birth through life_ here_,and want to reclaim something that is lost."

'It doesn't work for me. It really doesn't._'_

"Or, rather, something they could have if they managed to move on.

"Alchemy is a science. It is the principal that governs this world, and the scientist in me

_I want—_

wants to say that what is "happened" cannot be undone;

_Yes, that's it—_

there's no "replay" in human life, and yet . . .

_What_do_ I want?_

I've seen the Human Heart conceive

_Hope—_

and conjure things that could not happen otherwise; break alchemy into every law he could think of, and continue from there. . . .

_My regrets—_

"Because,

_I want . . ._

"people of great Amestrice, Alchemy has its laws, things that must be obeyed, and yet, alchemy is a _science,_a means to _do,_and for the good it reconstructs what _was_into what _is,_just as the human will turns what it wants into what it can achieve._"_

_I_will_—_

"With a little work—though never an _easy_work—it can be done. . . .

'So they said,' _he whispered as he walked. Walked into darkness._

"We_saved_this world, but not for it to have more pain. I, the Fuhrer, the _man_, was brought to my knees by this,

_The dark . . ._

"before these very grey steps,

_Drenched in red and blue_

"more than once a time, and yet,

_I felt it_

I see them not as red with blood, but red with life, the life I want to share with all of you and, as a man of science, help make for you."

He bowed his head, and shifted his weight as he tightly held onto the podium with his gloved hands. "Science is a tool, with laws, and the human heart is _limitless;_surely, as we are given these wings of possibility by our existence upon this earth, we, people of Central City, must take what we have and create a better world with it. Restructure what was into what we _have,_ and turn what we have into what _should be_. As the world continues to spin, we must, too, go with that flow, and go on, continue with what we've got and show them what we're made of, why we've hung on so long. We want to stay behind, to have things the way they were, but, people of Amestrice, this goes against the flow of the world, and can never be regarded as the right path in life by philosophers. As we hold on, we, too, stay behind; the world passes by us and we get lost in the flow, but, if we go through, _pull_through, we not only continue as we should, but we don't lose sight of what there was, is, and can be. We can love ourselves because of what we have managed to beget. To continue and move on is not to forget, but to rebuild the world for them, and for the survivors."

_Pain, love, and anger._

He leaned forward, intense. "So, people of Central City, it is time to take this tragedy and turn it into the hope we have for future, and build it into something we desire with all our human hearts, for_us,_and could perhaps never have created without Their strength." He straightened with a sad smile, putting his closed fist to his chest. "For this festival, I ask that you _let_those wounds so deep start to heal, because you each owe it to yourself; because I want to see you thrive; because now, we may finally have enough strength to take what they _gave_us, together, even though they are not here, and we may give back."

_I felt it here!_

"So on the last day of the observances this year, we will unveil a new monument, for those that are pained, those that are lost, and those that were left behind, so that we all, in time, may be pieced back together, and move on, and to learn how to hope again."

_He stepped through the crowd's shadows, into a ring of light before the Fuhrer where no men stood. The crowd parted easily before him, like a smooth river, and a hush grew as they saw his blue military coat and long blond hair trailing in a ponytail over his shoulders. It was when he finally stopped, weight on one foot, that he looked up toward the blinding sunlight, to the man that held the stage._

Roy's readied his next words, but the parting sea of colors in front of him caught his tongue. At any saner moment, he might have stopped to defend himself, let his soldiers, alchemists, defend him, but the specter before him gave him pause, and nearly brought him to his knees.

"How'd you _get_here?" he asked into the breeze, words he more mouthed than breathed into the silence pervading chilly the pavilion square.

The blond put his weight on one hip and then the other, coming up the steps of the wooden stage stairs, one by agonizing slow one.

He stepped up quietly, making no more noise than the weight of his body caused, rhythmic beats, innately human, like blood pulsing in the ears. He reached the second from the top step, and men enraptured suddenly leapt into action, but Roy held his hand out; he made them fall back, and wait.

The top stair. Ed's face, older, longer, but with all the same distinct, delicate features, greeted him, though when his eyes left the floor, they moved out to the crowd. Not even so much as an acknowledgment came to Mustang. The blond pushed forward, surprisingly tall, and thin, Roy realized, taller than him. His uniform tailcoats whispered as he moved; he walked with his side to the crowd until he turned, calmly, to the swaths of color and tiny dots of heads stretching for a mile.

_Do you wonder, as this cold wind blows, what it could have been? _

He could hear their whispers like falling waves on the ocean.

Ed turned back to the Flame Alchemist. The Fuhrer.

He lifted his empty gold eyes to those cold black ones.

"_So you want to get rid of me?"_

* * *

* * *

_ a/n._

_Hello again, everyone. This is just a little piece to break up the 2nd and 3rd chunk. Forgive the speech, but I like speeches. They make me happy. Only when I don't have to be forced to listen to them. ...or maybe I shouldn't have said that, ah well. . _

_Please keep reading! Burn through your entire day with me and our friends here. I dare you. _


	3. Chapter 3: A Miracle & The Human Cost

_Day 1, B: A Miracle_

* * *

_I don't want to be just a memory. Not here. And not yet._

"Just you?" Roy growled, stepping back. "Where's the other one?"

"'The other one'?" Ed asked simply. When he looked up Roy saw golden eyes, narrower than he remembered, and a thin face much longer and paler. His hair, too, was cornsilk, not golden, like it had been. His countenance was something along the lines of someone who hadn't seen the light of day in years, and was overly thin from a sudden growthspurt. But still, he had an amazing grace about him; the wind blew as he watched Roy, and the long, thin wisps at the end of his light-colored ponytail swayed to the side of his body, a gentle curve all the way down his back.

He waited patiently for Roy's answer; he truly wanted one, as though he was confused.

The Fuhrer scowled. "Where's that 'Alphonse'?" he clarified.

"Where's my _Alphonse_?" The blond turned his head with a wry smile and, interlocking his fingers, turned out his palms and stretched them hard. He put his hands around the back of his head and cocked his hips, leering at the man from the side; he faced the crowd and now stood near enough to the mic for it to catch his every word in a quiet, metallic echo.

He smiled wickedly. "Oh, my, I _do _love that boy; he's out there somewhere, getting everything ready for me, more than you already have." He smiled with a maniacal eye at Roy and then put his left hand on the mic. His words rang faintly over the crowd, whose members gazed up without a breath, absolutely silent.

The alchemists were ready to kill him, but they waited for Roy to move, to look their way, to get out of the way. But they knew what the words had meant: _If Alphonse is out there, he will get you before you can get to me. All of you. Easily._

The tall man's predatory eyes gleamed. "But you still don't believe it's really us?"

He suddenly dislodged the mic and swept out his free hand, his voice loud and strong. "Because, people of Amestris, _I _am the _Full_metal _Alchemist_!" His gloved hands slid together, and passed the mic to his left hand while he swept up the stand in his right.

As he lifted it from the ground, the black metal transformed in a shower of blue light, into a long and slender sharpened rod. His eyes flashed in the light, and his pearly white teeth grinned at the Fuhrer. "I'm _back."_

Riza dropped to her knees and five bullets rang from her gun. He flipped the staff in blur and five loud _ping_s ricocheted off. His glittering eyes stopped on her knowingly for just a moment as he laughed and spun the staff above his head; then he jammed it into the stage floor.

Fusca burst from the base and, in cold dread, Roy realized that the writing that spread under his feet through the crowd, was a gigantic transmutation circle.

He looked to Ed, about to yell, but he stopped when he saw he was laughing. The blond's head tipped down, and with his daring eyes narrowed on Roy, he purred into the mic, "You'll thank me, Mustang. I'm saving the people, where you couldn't help them."

"No!"

The mic slipped from his hand, and before it fell, Ed swung his hands together, the staff inside them. A flash exploded from the center and engulfed them both in heat.

A massive boom ripped through the hell space, and when Roy came to his senses there was no one around him. He was surrounded by an alchemic light that flickered and twisted around him with a murderous mind. Stabbing pain was creeping up his legs; he tried to move but they were stuck fast to black ground he couldn't even see. He shot his attention outward, to the dark shape lingering over him:

"_Ed!_ What are you doing!"

"You can't stop this, Mustang!" he shouted back, vicious, his voice hoarse as it strained to be heard above the vortex."You can't _ignore me_, anymore!"

His eyes were wide as he stood tall in the blaze, and his bared teeth glinted. And in his arms—was—

Roy pushed to his feet against the weight of the light and wind, but he was being torn apart. He grabbed his stomach and crumpled to the stage. He held it for a terrible second, but it was no use—blood splashed across his fingers, and Ed watched him with steely slits of eyes.

Someone's _got to die in human transmutation._

"Roy!" Riza screamed, tiny and frail.

He stared at his wife desperately, nerves failing his arms and blood dripping down his nose. She had struggled out of Ed's arms, but was still trapped around the waist, and her legs looked limp. "Roy, help me! Just _fry _the bastard, it's _not_ Ed! It _can't _be!"

The blond's sharp eyes flicked over to her, and just as she glared back at him, he hit the base of her neck.

Ed snapped his head back to Roy, who was indeed about to crisp him. "You're _dying!" _he hissed. "Just _die _or you'll screw up the transmutation!"

Roy smiled. "Good."

Something hard connected with his jaw. He jerked backwards, but his wrist stayed in the same place. He looked up, head spinning more than it already was, and focused past grey automail holding his wrist to the head that owned it.

"I am the Fullmetal Alchemist, and you _owe _me this. Just _lay down_." His hand started to crush the muscles and blood vessels in Roy's arm. "Trust me, I've done it once before, and it's not that bad. Really, you'll feel better afterwards."

He twisted Roy's arm sharply with a snap and kicked him in the gut, then turned on his heel and jumped back up the statue to the platform where Riza was. He picked up the discarded metal staff and held it out in front of him, one end on the ground.

"Come and drink from me," he offered to the void. "I want to get this over with."

Even as the white light rose, engulfing everything, and it started to hurt inside, a smile curled on to his lips.

Red rose into the sky. Purple lightening dashed over the pavilion crowd, sparking between the dark clouds looming low overhead and a searing-hot wind spinning in the encircling darkness.

"Come to me," he breathed, deep and rough. His hands spread out, and the electricity jumping between them unfolded onto the people. One by one, eventually into a wave, they fell, dots winking out of existence into the distance. There were no screams, just the impressions of voices and feelings drowned in the gale that blew down through the streets from the heavens.

He held on as long as possible, at first something that fed the fire, but as the intricate devil circles, mirroring each other on the suffocating black clouds and the concrete ground of the city, finally halted their slow spin, everything changed. First a blast of icy cold, the wind changing direction abruptly, and then black hands wound up from cracks and shadows to pull him down. But he did not fear; the transmutation was too strong, to unfinished, for them to take a prize.

The reaction needed _him._

The lightening shifted blood red. He closed his eyes and felt the tightening in his chest; the light snaked over every last body laid out before him, and from most drew the object of his affection: that which makes the crimson elixir.

But at the same time that the semi-solid mass gathered in the air above him, his eyes blurred: his chest constricted until he couldn't breathe, and his heart engorged with blood until it palpitated, erratic and painful.

_You'll be proud of me, Mustang._

It was taking his life. But it was giving him what he wanted. The liquid pooled into a sphere, rich and dark in the sky, and grew until it reflected swirling rubies in his coveting eyes.

He pulled his arms back, straining against the demand of sacrifice, and the lightening from the clouds transformed. The bolts changed direction until they reached the ball, melting into its surface until even the furious clouds, the array, sucked into that one glowing point in an instant. The wind funneled up, and with a great rush split the ball.

Released, Ed's head tipped back. He watched the liquid shimmer apart, even as he crashed into the stage floorboards. He could be satisfied with today, because in his hand lay a pretty little dark stone.

For just one moment, Central City was quiet.

Just one moment, and red fell from the sky once again.

* * *

_Day 1, C: The Human Cost_

"Brother." Fletcher pushed Russell's still form again, fingers shaking as much as his voice. "Brother, c'mon, wake up, you _have _to. . . ."

Nothing. Fletcher bit his lip as he glanced around the street again, and then squeezed the shoulders under his hands. The cold wind howled through the buildings and he shivered harder. "C'mon, I know you can do it. . . ." He put his freezing palms against Russell's cheeks. "_C'mon_. . ."

A sharp breath hissed through his brother's teeth, and Fletcher felt a shiver go through his skin. Russell turned his head and groaned, hunching up with his arms against his chest before he finally opened his eyes. For a moment, he stared at the concrete against his head, wondering how it got there, and then, seeing folded legs, and his brother attached to them, he tried to raise himself. It proved to be like lifting pallettes of bricks to lift even his upper half, so, eventually, he gave up and Fletcher pulled him the rest of the way into a sitting position.

Russell held his head in his hand and shut everything out to lessen the throbbing. "Brother," Fletcher's wary voice cut through, "are you . . . _all right. _. . ?"

"Huhg?" His little brother's face was knit, and he looked like it was fighting back an injury. As Fletcher spoke again, Russell saw blood on his teeth.

"Brother, you're . . . you—" Fletcher whimpered.

Russell lurched forward to aide, but stopped mid-way and turned his head down to himself. His grey shirt, once crisp and pristine, now stuck to his front with a thin layer of blood that had gone cold in the wind.

"What the hell is this?" he asked, picking the cloth away from his skin and looking down the neck to the inside. His skin had a similar dried layer, but there was no wound—it looked like the blood had simply seeped through his skin from the inside. And Fletcher—

"What happened to you!" he demanded quickly, coming forward again.

"No, brother, don't; I'm fine." He pushed the attention back. "I feel kinda sick, but if you're the same, there's a different problem we need to worry about."

Slowly, Russell surveyed what lay before him as he put two protective arms around Fletcher's smaller shoulders. The Pavilion floor stretched around him was littered with bodies, nearly no empty ground to see, everything covered in and surrounded by red. Most were laid out on their backs in almost even rows, eyes closed, hands enfolded on their stomachs. He turned the entire three-hundred and sixty degrees, panicked; there was nothing but red and skin. Red streaks dried on buildings, red ground, red people, pouring through the streets, all the way through the square far head and beyond.

"Fletcher. . . ." The word dripped out of his mouth, and nothing else came. His painful heartbeat was the only thing his mind could make out.

His hand trembled the entire way as it slid down Fletcher's arm. He suddenly felt faint, trying not to look at the people lying within inches of him.

For a very long time, all he was aware of was his breathing in his ears.

"Are they . . . alive?" Fletcher asked in a tiny voice, just above Russell's head.

Russell straightened, and almost automatically his gaze searched. To his left: a woman, black-haired, wearing blue drenched in red speckles; to his right, a youth about his age, slightly green, brown-haired and wearing splattered red.

He groaned, but after looking to Fletcher for a second, sighed and leaned over to the woman. He put his fingers to the white throat, under the chin, and tried to remember: _Dead bodies are science. Just science. I know science. Science can't hurt you._

He winced at the thought.

He felt nothing. However, it could have been his own heartbeat overpowering hers; Russell put out his thumb on the other side, leaned closer. Did he hear a breath? The body was clammy, but not really _cold; _just . . . _immobile. _And the drops of red on her face—they didn't look bright enough to be blood. Russell smeared the dried remnants on to his finger and, as he laid his ear against the woman's chest, rubbed it between his fingers. It felt too . . . _gritty _to be blood. It was almost like—

"Brother," Fletcher's annoyed voice broke through his thoughts, "These people are alive."

"What?"

"Get your hand off that woman's breast and look what time it is." Fletcher handed him his wristwatch. Four PM. "It's been _hours. _And in this wind—if these people aren't as cold as ice, they're alive."

Russell's eyebrows knitted together. "Then what was this about breasts?"

Fletcher hung his head and sighed.

_"Anyone able, please come to the center stage immediately. Remain calm. Doctors and alchemists, please identify yourselves; we are in need of your assistance. Again, please remain calm. . . ."_

The brothers turned toward the sound as the message repeated itself.

"Do you know whose voice that is?" Fletcher asked.

"It's not the Fuhrer's."

"Should we do what it says?"

". . . _I _wouldn't." Russell frowned, and for a moment his blue eyes flicked over his brother's. He surveyed the damage: pale, the worn, heavy look. It had been so long since he'd _really _looked at him, he hardly recognized him, and now with all the red caked on him. . . .

He was suddenly acutely aware of how happy he was to not be _dead._

"Fletcher. . . ." Russell raised to his knees, but nothing happened. His eyebrows pushed together and his face grew hot; the voice's message projected across the silent space again.

"Are you all right . . . ?" Fletcher's hand drew away and cold invaded Russell's skin where it had been.

"If they're alive, then they have souls, _right?" _he asked. He was shaking, staring up against the grey sky as if his life depended on it, and blinking through a haze. As Fletcher drew near again, water streaked down Russell's eyes.

"Russell—?"

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "So sorry for _everything."_

"What? What are you _talking _about?" Fletcher asked, but he had a terrible feeling he knew where this was going.

"The women, I'm so sorry—I never meant for any of that to happen. . . . I just—I just—"

"Russell. . . ." Of all the times to relapse. . . . He thought they were _over _this. Taking a quick look around, Fletcher had to admit there was only so much his scientific side could do; the longer he was in this devastation, the more he wanted to scream and hide, and Russell would only be worse.

Don't leave me to deal with this on my own. I'm not strong enough to carry you— Just as Fletcher sighed, the man reached out for his hand.

"Please, _please, _I don't want to be _right _anymore." He sucked in a sick breath, praying for the strength he felt bleeding from his body as he turned his head, and saw nothing but bodies again. So very, very few stirring people, scattered about in the miles of distance.

"What are you _on _about?" Fletcher asked, considering how to get his captured hand back.

When Russell spoke again, his eyes forced shut, his voice was a tiny whisper that all the life had dripped out of.

"Didn't you see the _Stone_, Fletcher?"

* * *

Alone, Maes Hughes was when he awoke on the stage. He pushed himself to his knuckles, and almost fell the moment he got to his knees. His head spun like a merry-go-round, tipping this way and that until he simply fell on his back, and stilled, staring at the sky.

It was calm and quiet, fluffy grey clouds drifting lazily across the hazy dome far above.

"General Hughes," a young male voice floated over. A face with tightly-knit blond brows came into view to accompany it. "Are you alive, Sir?"

Maes blinked and found he was coordinated enough to rub at his eyes. While his arm was occupied with that, he pushed himself into a sitting position with the other. The soldier stuck out his hand and Maes took it; standing, he surveyed the scene, unable to remember where he was.

His grip on the youth's arm tightened: a vast red lake that spread out before them. Maybe a thousand people in the crimson spread had pealed themselves from the ground and left white outlines on the stone. The remaining hundreds of thousands were still, lumps on the ground.

His heart jumped: Roy. His head darted back and forth, but there was no sign. There were others laid out—Feury, Breda—but no Roy. Havoc was stretched out on his side, but he was breathing. Or appeared to be.

Hughes's black eyes fixed on his attendant, streaked with red like all the rest.

"We took the Fuhrer to the hospital already," he offered, eyes only a little too wide to illicit complete faith in his mental state.

"And how _is _he?"

The soldier's mouth fell open, then he closed it, slowly, before speaking. "Same as everyone else, Sir. . . . Comatose?"

"Great." Maes checked the rest of the stage. "And the Fuhrer's wife?"

The young captain looked to a subordinate once, then shook his head. "No one knows."

"You don't . . . _know?"_

"She's gone." He shrugged, helpless.

Hughes forced his eyes shut and shivered. Around him, there was nothing but young enlisted, raising from the stage and immediately around it in much the same fashion he had. Everyone else from the government was as pale as the concrete they lay upon. He was the only high-ranking officer currently functioning.

His eyes jumped to where their attacker had been, the mic as well. The thin metal stand was melted to the stage floor, and just around it was a clean human outline. Red had seeped into it from the edges—it hadn't been covered for as long as those just now awakening—but it was definitely there.

So there had been more than one. Or he hadn't been sucked into his own—

Transmutation.

"Sir," came the voice at his arm. A few others were starting to gather around him as well, others going from person to person on shaky legs. "I think you're in charge. What do we do?"

_We were transmuted. Human—In broad daylight. The people—_

_My wife._

Maes's grip tightened on the poor boy until the blood cut off, but the kid didn't even flinch. The blond just stared at him, directionless, the same way Maes stared back.

"We've got a lot of things to do," he heard come out of his mouth.

Find out who there was. Where they were. What they could do with them.

Who would there even be at the hospital? Had it stretched that far?

"What time is it?"

The soldier's eyes blinked to life. He turned to the clock tower across the square, but it had stopped. Without a watch, he turned his head up to the sky. "Two," he said, breathlessly, unsure. Then repeated, "Four."

"Four." Maes reiterated, working it through his head. It had been eleven; Roy always wanted public functions to start at a reasonable hour. But if their culprit—or anyone else—had decided to run, they could have been long gone by now.

There was a long moment before Maes's mind was able to work more words to the soldiers gathering around. "We have to help these people." He shook his head. "You said they're—?"

"The people," the Captain began, stepping back with his arm finally free, "are alive. But comatose. A few have pulses, but . . ." he gave a quick glance around, biting his lip, "mostly, the only way we can figure out they're not dead is that they're not _cold."_

Maes folded his arms, biting his lip as well. "You're a medic, aren't you?" he asked, eyeing the kid's stripes. He nodded, shifted his weight on his feet under Maes's glare. "So what's happened."

"I'm not an alchemist; I have no clue," he went on. "I tried, but . . . Maybe Colonel Armstrong would know? He woke up before you, he's the one that's been giving orders; he's the one broadcasting the message—" He lifted one hand, letting Maes hear the signal for himself.

Maes stared; he hadn't even noticed. But if there was _someone _else, and rounding up the able-bodied—then he could deal with other things.

_My wife._

"The hurt, the wounded. Get them help." He felt the rush of battle, of being back in command, and it was an exhilarating sort of unpleasant. "Find the rest of your unit. Get as many soldiers as you can together, and bring them . . . bring them . . ."

He was suddenly very aware of heaving breaths scratching in his chest, adrenaline working its way to light-headedness and weak knees. This wasn't what they needed. He tried again.

"Collect everyone you can find in the square. Get the soldiers to help the wounded, take them to the hospital. After that, leave a portion of the men here for when more awaken. . . ."

_I've gotta find my wife._

The amount of people laying out before him in a sea of statues made the task seem near impossible: He had no idea where she'd been. It was possible she'd still have been at home, going to come only after the crowds.

But Gracia would never have done that. She was an officer's wife.

"You're assuming there's someone left in the hospital to help." A new voice suddenly cut across the windy stage. The soldiers parted to Maes's right, staring at a young man with short blond hair, ragged, pale, with streaks of blood smudged around his body and an alarmingly large patch around his starkly lighter shirt. He was tall, terribly skinny, and remarkably like the man Maes had thought was just on this stage. He was propped up with his arm around another young man a little shorter than he, but with similar features, and who was wearing darker colors slightly better at obstructing the stains he too had. Maes stared without a word at the image of Death for while longer, before the cogs in his head resumed turning.

"Jesus, are you all right?" he ended up asking.

The kid coughed over his relative's shoulder, his free hand coming up to catch the fluid. What he brought back in his hand was a splash of bright red.

Several people jerked into action, including Maes, but the youth motioned them back.

"This stuff tastes terrible," he said, as though it were an explanation. "It's _sweet."_

Everyone stared. Then, slowly, Maes's mind started to turn. "It's not . . . blood?"

The Russell shook his head, slowly. Wrapping his free hand loosely around his shirt front, he brought the pair to the edge of the stage, and beckoned Hughes down to whispering distance. "Do you remember the transmutation?" he mouthed into his ear.

Maes's eyes flicked to the side for a second as he thought about it, checking his soldiers. ". . . No."

Russell nodded. "Then I have something to tell you."

* * *

a/n.

Yay Russell! I am a Russell fan. I tried not to make Fletcher terrible; the two of them are supposed to be the comedic relief for this story. They do a decent job, though at some point it became DOOM AND GLOOM and these two get sucked into the motifs, too. Ah, and sorry for the random OC MPs that make this fic go round. I try to at least give them character, so if you really like reading real stories, I would hope you wouldn't mind too much. : )

I gets only better after this! For real.

Last edited: 8/2010


	4. Chapter 4: A Return

Warning: This chapter is rated R.

* * *

He stroked Riza's hair quietly, his head tipped and his smile thoughtful. He leaned his weight on one hand as he sat in the grass of one of the cemetery's many hills. As she slept beside him, it could have been innocent, aside from the air of malice that permeated his crow-like eyes.

"He's coming, Al," he said without moving. He could feel it in his body, and didn't like it. Though, at the same time, he had to concede that it _was _just what his plans entailed.

"Yes, he's coming soon, Al, and they won't like it one bit."

He tipped his head back and laughed into the early morning air.

* * *

_Day 2: The Messenger_

_Part A: A Return_

_

* * *

_There were only so many people they could help. Morning dawned with a layer of cold fog spread over hibernating Central City, hovering on top of white tarps the alchemists had been instructed to forge over the bodies in the streets. The off-white materials flew like lowered flags, strung between the buildings and stretching out for miles without a thing stirring under them. The original response was to help the fallen, move them somewhere warm and human, but when the reality of having one percent of the population move the remaining ninety-nine, there so only so much that could be done.

And Hughes had seen it before: when all humans were gone, the last stronghold between them and never being there in the first place was the ghostly remains of buildings.

Drops of dew slid down the grey edifices; colored shudders, shrouded in mist, hung open undisturbed. The entire urban landscape sprawled out for miles before Maes Hughes lay silent, yet from his imagination he heard gunshots ringing through the streets, saw crosses hung up in freezing-cold wind over the pavilion square spread out beyond his office. And Ed—

"This guy is a total nut." Havoc's voice announced abruptly, appearing in the door and throwing down a spread of photographs. They were of houses and streets stained red, with the shrouded forms of once-humans embellishing their bases and a decidedly clean absence of them in other places. Like a murder scene, but lacking the hand print following the body down the wall.

"Havoc." Maes's voice did its best not to waver as he moved over the images. "Why is it that we're still here?" His subordinate's distant eyes flicked up to his, pointedly quiet to avoid the answer. Maes gritted his teeth until they stung and tapped the back of his pen against the papers strewn across his desk. Mustang's desk.

_Where the hell is Gracia, and Elys—_

If he finished those words, the fear whispering over and over again in his gut, there would be no one left to lead the country.

"Are you holding up," Havoc offered, profering a cup of coffee while drinking out of his own.

"I don't want to talk about it," Maes responded, though he took the offering anyway. "Be a hell of a lot better if it this were Drachman vodka."

"It would be a hell of a lot better if it were Drachmans _doing _this."

Hughes gave him a short look, and Havoc quickly shrugged. "Sorry." He tried to make light of it, taking a sip of his own blend. "No drinking on duty, Sir."

There was silence while Hughes flipped through the pictures. "You weren't here during the revolt, were you?"

"No, Sir."

"Neither was I." He drummed his fingers against the desk. "I wonder how many of our new troops weren't, either?"

Havoc frowned. "You think he was only hitting people here during the rebellion? How can a transmutation only hit people he might have a vendetta against?"

"You say it as though it's Ed." Hughes cleared his throat, dangerously. The look he gave Havoc went along with the sentiment. Havoc shrugged again, holding up his hands.

"Just saying."

"Havoc, if anything, Edward is probably . . . gone." Maes chewed his lip. "But most of the people that are at the trainstation, that have woken up and are leaving . . . are from out of town. They're going _back, _to someone."

"We're still checking the ones that are leaving?"

Maes nodded over the hot coffee, though his voice was heavy and hard to make words come out of. "Yes. I had to commandeer the trains; the companies would've stopped the routes. However, no one is allowed in except relief." Times like these, it felt good to talk about something bland, concrete. But not economics. That required people. People that were alive.

Havoc looked away while Hughes's eyes drifted off; the blond man shifted his weight, before offering a thought: "But there's no way to control a transmutation like that, is there? I mean, no one can _control _something like that, can they?"

"I wonder if it was random," Hughes muttered. "If it just needed so many . . . lives . . . and then stopped?" He shivered. "Or if it was some particular material in abundance in _us_? Because surely . . . _surely _.. . he couldn't have singled us out." He sounded hopeful.

". . . But _They're _still gone."

The black glare Hughes shot Havoc made sure he would never make the mistake of voicing that thought again, and he even backed it up with an unconscious growl. Though, he could not ignore the facts: "Yes, our loved ones are gone, Havoc. Here, but soulless." He sighed, and dropped his head, staring at his hands against the table. "And I have no idea . . . which fate is better."

Havoc sighed. "Hostages?"

"He's got all the hostages he wants, Havoc, he didn't have to single them out." Hughes's face disappeared behind his dry, cracked hand as he rubbed his eyes. "But really, I don't think that's what he wants."

"No?"

"From what I know of alchemy," Maes began quietly, resting his chin on the back of his folded hands, "I really doubt that there's a way to put souls back in after they're gone, the way we have here. And who knows if they're even still separate, being condensed into a stone. . . ." The air was almost gone from his voice, so crushed with grief. "And from what that alchemist said . . . ."

Maes shook his head, far more resolved: "What do you think, Havoc. The bodies add a lot of catalyst to the Stone; if you learned _how _to extract _just _a soul, en masse, rather than taking the body for ingredients too, why _would _you, other than just to make the rest of us _suffer?"_

He frowned, and Havoc stared at the wall, uneasy. Maes continued, quiet, eerie: "No, Havoc, this guy's out to deal with individual people, not the government, or whatever the government could get him. I'm sure they're alive, but . . . he's out for vengeance, plain and simple. Vengeance against people."

"But why us," Havoc sighed. He didn't want to say it, but he found the words slipping from his mouth. "You, me, Armstrong, a bunch of green horn soldiers and some of the congressmen, not Mustang,not some of the old crew. . . . What's the connection. . . . Unless it _is _Ed—"

"If it's _Ed," _Maes snarled, "if it's fucking _Edward, _there wouldn't be a damn random thing about this. Ed would have a _plan. _Roy wouldn't have his soul taken unless Ed was so mad at him he wanted him _dead, _and the _rest _of us. . . ." Maes's mouth worked for a while, silently, until he finally stared up at Havoc. "Ed wouldn't do this to the rest of us."

Havoc took a breath, his brow knitted together, but held Maes's gaze with his unblinking blue eyes. "And if the transmutation was random, then who could have done it. And lived."

Hughes buried his face from Havoc's accusatory stare, rubbing his hands up and down his face. "Tringham. Tringham. _Why _do I know that _name?"_

"I don't know," Havoc sighed, able, for now, to give up the ghost. "Maybe from his published work? Or someone related to him?"

"Maybe." He was unimpressed. "He said this had something to do with red water. But why would there be red water in us? It's preposterous."

Havoc nodded, but the possibilities weighed on him. "But how could that kid have so much blood taken out of him and still walk? Was it possibly something else in him?"

"He wasn't walking very _well," _Maes noted. "That's why we had to send him to the hospital. A fair amount of blood was over your uniform as I recall, and you weren't hacking up stuff. Neither was I. I think the—transmutation—took more out of him. . . . But why? Why more than others?" He had said, if anything, that he should have more resistance to it. That was how he'd been awake long enough to see the cloud pool into a red-amber stone. . . .

Maes grumbled at the image of it. He addressed Havoc: "I don't like it. My wife and child and a good million others' lives are on the line with finding this terrorist; I'm not going to spare anything to find him. Go look through the records for that name."

Havoc cleared his throat, and nodded. "Can do, Sir, right away, but, before I go. . . . What did you think of the last photograph?"

Hughes grunted. "Was that written in blood?"

"Mm."

A little array for transmuting water, on the wall of the pavilion's belltower, inscribed with words ringing the inside: _Some things you can't forget. Some things, no one knows._

Maes sighed. "What's he talking about? Assuming it's even the same culpret?"

"Did you check the tower?" Havoc asked.

"Yes," Hughes answered, baffled. "Nothing."

"Huh." Havoc tipped his head. "Then he's not talking about something that happened in the tower?"

"Well, everything that happened to Ed did happen around that spot," he said, "if we're going for that theory. Otherwise, no. But, the old county jail across the street was conjoined on the first floor to the belltower, before we closed it up. They used to get water for the prisoners from an old underground well in the basement, that the tower was built over way back when. And you don't know this, Havoc, but the old jail was where they were holding the prisoners that were executed during the rebellion; they marched right out that connecting door to the tower, and then into the street. There are tunnels underground that connect this building's cells and a few other of the office buildings on this side of the street to the jail." Hughes shrugged. "Of course we searched it all last night, but there's nothing. No signs, no traps, just dusty bricks and some scary thoughts."

Hughes sighed and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Havoc barely had to mull over the idea of how all that added up. "It makes another good point toward the Ed factor," he said. "I'd watch it."

Hughes grumbled from under his hand. "It could, but something like that is really easy to go astray with; I can't in good conscience say it's not just my knowledge of the matter swaying my opinion. Plus, it could be entirely someone else. Prank. Ed's writing was never that legible."

He tapped his fingers on the desk and snorted. "It could definitely be more than one person working together on this. But if so, we can't discount it: Why an array for water? People?"

Havoc shook his head. "70 percent water. . . . But that seems too easy. What, he drew an array to whack us over the head about what he did?" He swirled his mug, reconsidering. "I mean, it is a valid thought if the guy's just that sadistic. Maybe it's the array he used. Showing us it to taunt us about our own mortality? What about rain being the water? And the circle's red: Red rain, so, blood . . . ?"

"Check and check," Maes sighed through his nose, spreading the pictures out again. "We've got all that, so . . . Maybe?" He shook his head. "Something like this appeared after Roy was attacked. What if this is our warning about what's next?"

He looked up at Havoc, and Havoc, shaken, blew out a heavy breath as his eyes wandered up toward the ceiling. "You say it like it's some force of nature coming at us. I wonder if we can really 'outrun' it."

"With the scope of his alchemy, I get the impression we couldn't. Still, we can't abandon the city because he'd probably just go to where ever we went, either for us or people in general. We _have_ to stop this maniac." He buried his face in his hand. "So _sick."_

Havoc mulled over his thoughts, swirling them within the depth of the coffee mug. "I don't think the little boss would hurt anyone like this," he thought aloud, though conceding Hughes's point. "But I'd look at it this way if it is: If you're in a coma for a few years, get shot in the head, might you not be the same on the way out?"

"What's the chance that you'd _wake up _after getting shot in the head like that?" Hughes rubbed the bridge of his nose; he felt a terrible migraine coming on. "We must take all measures to avoid a quick judgement that will be our downfall."

"Also," Havoc continued, "this means it's either a nutjob with profuse alchemy skills, or the boss. Which one has a motive? Which one makes more _sense._"

"Only the alchemy." Hughes gritted his teeth. "Alchemy's the only difference. There shouldn't be anyone else in this world that can do that."

"There was automail. Also automail."

"There are weird people that hack their arms off for asthetics," Hughes said. "Especially nutjobs that would impersonate the famous."

"But then, if we saw Alphonse, wouldn't he be a suit of armor?"

They stared at each other.

"He's the difference," Hughes breathed. "We don't have to find _Ed. _We have to find _Al. _He's human now."

_Or was._

"You think he'd cooperate?" Havoc wondered, uneased by how much it sounded like Maes was going to have placed 'easy to shoot' on the end of his sentence. He swirled the drink. "That . . . 'Ed' . . . said he was around."

"That's all right." Hughes got to his feet. "Even if he doesn't, Al might be easier to break. . . . And Ed is extremely predictable—we have his brother as a hostage, he'll come find us and go down easy."

Havoc sucked in a breath, but held his peace. He didn't feel right since the transmutation the day before, but Maes really wasn't helping.

"So . . . how would you suggest we find him?" Damn, he wanted a cigarette. Or some of that vodka.

"If only Roy were here. . . . He could read those boys like a book. How is he doing?"

Havoc shook his head. "Same as everyone else: No signs of improving."

"Damn, Havoc," Maes ran his hand over his face. "You sure know how to sugar-coat the truth, don't you."

"I've heard smokers are like that." His smile, though tough, was forced.

There was a silence, and Hughes turned his head away. Havoc was quite aware that with no one to go back to, the man really had nothing else to do, and furthermore, nothing to live for. He wasn't sure what he was going to do when Hughes himself admitted that.

"How's the search going for . . . everyone?" Hughes asked eventually.

Havoc coughed uncomfortably. "Nothing yet."

"You should get some sleep. Someone else can look up that Tringham report."

The man chuckled. "Get some sleep yourself, Sir. As the underling, I'm here to carry the cogs along." He toasted his mug slightly. "Besides, bad cups of coffee can't be wasted."

He took a sip of the brown stuff, then an even larger swig, contemplating if too much coffee could get him screwed up enough to go home. To an empty place, where no one else might ever live.

He stared into the abyss within the porcelain.

War.

"The government's going to get fried for this, Havoc, you realize that," Hughes elected, despair in his voice.

"Mm."

The two were quiet for a moment, Havoc staring out the window to the reddish city beyond, and Maes staring into the glossy desk, impervious to time and changing politics. Eventually, even with everything he wanted to say, Havoc found he had nothing that would be of any use.

He sighed. "I guess, I'll go—"

As Havoc's hand laid on the door, the phone rang. For a moment, the two men stared at the black machine's soft warble vibrating the receiver, until Maes reached out a shaky hand and gave Havoc a quick glance.

The blond let his hand slip from the ancient, ivory knob and waited. Hughes acknowledged that he was listening, but still half-turned away from him despite it.

"Yes, this is General Hughes. Go ahead."

There was a moment of silence, and then Maes slammed his hand down on the table. The items jostled; Havoc jumped.

"_What?_" Maes snarled into the phone. "You said he's on a _train, _from La Fan_tae_?"

Hughes grew very still, ear crushing into the phone.

"Yes," reported the man on the other end, factually, if a bit unsettled. "That's what the agent has told me. He was coming back that way, and he said he was just sitting there by himself, staring out the window rather stoically. He approached him, and he said he was a bit soft-spoken, but friendly. Gave up his name easily."

"I'll bet," Hughes seethed. "What's the ETA of that train?"

"I've heard what's going on in Central, Sir, and that's the thing—it's either another impostor, or . . ." Hughes growled a warning into the receiver, and the man hastily continued. "It's just that . . . it's a direct train from two-hundred miles away that's been going for the last _sixteen _hours. It can't be your guy."

"It doesn't matter," Hughes insisted. "And I didn't ask you that, anyway, Lieutenant. What's the time, platform, and _number _of that train and his car?"

"ETA . . . a little under an hour; train number 5, car fourteen."

"The very back."

"What, Sir? Oh, yes, it appears so."

"Never mind that. Get every last one of your forces over to that platform _now, _and bring A company and D squadron, too."

"The snipers, Sir? All of them?"

"_Do it_!"

Maes slammed the phone's receiver down and flung his coat over his shoulders, instantly going for the door. "C'mon, Havoc—we have an Elric to catch."

* * *

The Tringham brothers stood on he balcony above the amassed sea of soldiers, waiting in the shadows. There was one wing of the train station open for civilian operation, and this wasn't it. When Fletcher had glimpsed a suspiciously large wave of soldiers entering the station from the back, of course they had followed. Below them, the multiple units of blue-uniformed men and women spread out underneath the cathedral canopy and around the three platforms.

Russell gripped the balcony's iron railing, and his white knuckles caught Fletcher's eyes. "Are you all right, Brother?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine." After the initial passing of chemicals from his blood, he improved dramatically. His stomach was still weak, but he could walk. He could stand. He didn't know to what end that would bring him, but for now he was going to make it, and for that he was thankful.

"I'm glad we got you out of that hospital," Fletcher continued. "Even if we had to run you out the window. . . ." The youth cocked his jaw and clicked his tongue, thinking about how well—or mildly terrible—the escape had been. It had been nothing classy, that was for sure, but no one had been overly hurt.

"How long do you think it will be until they find out we're gone?" Fletcher asked.

"They probably already have," Russell muttered, once again flicking his eyes back and forth to their uncovered exits. "It's a matter of if it gets back to those who want to know."

"_Shyeah, _you did a great job with that nurse. She hates _your _guts now." Russell cringed, but, as it normally was with it, Fletcher plowed right on through: "You think they'll find us?"

Russell punched him in the arm. "'Speak not.' What _I _want to know is if Al's really on that train."

Fletcher turned an apathetic eye out onto tracks, disappearing into the green hills in the distance. "Mm," was all he said.

Russell frowned as the cloud of steam appeared over the horizon. Seeing the way the soldiers moved, a horrible dread caught his stomach and wouldn't let it go.

"Brother."

". . . Yeah?"

"We can't leave until this is figured out, you know." A hand snaked over to grip the rail next to his, so their smallest fingers touched. "I don't want to leave Central and then suddenly have you die."

Russell managed a thin laugh, one syllable, and weak. He looked anywhere but his little brother, biting his lip, and tried to find something he could say. It was a long time, but, finally, he was able to clasp his hand around his brother's, shaky and cold.

"I don't want that, either, Fletcher."

_Or to have us both die here for no reason at all._

He watched the tracks, and on the horizon came a black-and-red train, dutifully chugging homeward. The whistle blew.

"Russell," Fletcher asked again when the tone had died down. "Why do you think the Fuhrer's wife is still missing?"

* * *

Alphonse Elric, his hand smooshing against his cheek and his forehead against the glass, watched the countryside go by. It was only when the city came into view that his heart-rate jumped a little, and his blood thrummed. Slowly, his eyes narrowed into a dark scowl. He knew what he had to do, and it wouldn't be easy—

He frowned, and then blinked brightly. The station was terribly crowded, by a huge swatch of blue—

Al started. He edged back into his seat and looked around the train until he focused on the man who had been sitting and talking with him, the man who was now conveniently turned away from him, reading a newspaper. Al glared at him for a second, but then, with a sigh, leaned back and resigned himself. There were too many to fight.

"Been making trouble here then, maybe?" he asked himself.

He wondered if they would storm him—probably if he didn't get off by himself, he decided—but he patiently waited for the train to come to a full halt, then got up with everyone else and pulled his black briefcase from the rack above his seat. He hurried to the agent's back and tapped him on the shoulder as he tried hastily to leave.

"Take this for me, will you?" He smiled absolutely pleasantly. "It's important alchemical information, you know."

His grin was toothy as he took the startled man by the shoulders and gently steered him toward the car's exit. "Don't want it to get all shot up, you know. You, either. Good match, I'd say."

He giggled nervously, and as the man was going, Al bent over the nearest table, putting his elbow on the surface and resting his cheek on his fist, surveying the scene outside the window, one last time. When he sighed, it was heavy; one last futile gesture.

Al tapped the table with his knuckles and stood upright, casually interlocking his fingers behind his head. "Well, sky," he offered as he started walking, "let's see what we can do."

* * *

_"Stop right there!"_

Al forced a smile at the hundreds of readied rifles trained his way as he held up his hands. "Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?" he announced kindly, eyes quickly searching for an officer among them.

"You can come down," offered a regal-looking, white-haired man that he had skipped, an officer just a few feet in front of him, in the semi-circle of empty space at the bottom of the car's steps. Al narrowed his eyes, and found him to be a Brigadier General.

"Oh, okay!" Al beamed as though he was about to skip merrily to him, but suddenly stopped. "But I'd rather not get shot today—I have something very important to do."

"Like killing the Fuhrer?" the man suggested.

Al gaped. "What's your _name?" _he wondered after a moment of hesitation.

The man nodded politely with a smile and held out his hand for Al to take it. "Elkhart. And you are Alphonse Elric, yes?"

"Mmm..." Al bit his lip as he looked around further. "Just who sent you here?" He didn't see anyone he knew, and it _really _looked like he wasn't going to be able to get out of this. And if he didn't—

"Men." The officer closed his eyes for a second as he gave the command. Al jumped and waved his hands.

"You don't need to do that!" he assured. "It's, it's okay—I'll come down."

He descended fairly quickly, unaware that they were going to be this short on patience. He knew that the rest of this was going to hurt if it didn't kill him first, his heart was a lump in his throat.

Al wasn't really sure which side he got jumped from first, but he was on the ground the next thing he knew, being pummeled unnecessarily in order to be "subdued." He ended on his knees, his hands tied behind his back and his head wrenched back to look at the general in front of him.

"Tell me where your brother is," he instructed.

"My brother . . . ?" Al echoed, his eyebrows pushed together quizzically.

He was struck on the back of the head, and would've hit the ground again if it weren't for the hands holding him by his hair. "What's it matter where he is?" he demanded. "He's been in a coma for six years!"

Al thought he actually got kicked in the head this next time, but most of it was a sharp blur in which his head hit the concrete and left him spinning. The general grabbed his shirt and ripped him forward. "Tell us now, or you will be killed. There's no way out of this; we _promise _you that."

Unbelievable scenarios rushed through Al's dizzy head, and he was very much sure that his life hung on his word. Finally, he shot his gaze down, searching for the answers as he hid his face, feigning weakness. "I can help you find him," he began meekly, buying time.

"I bet you can," Elkhart agreed disinterestedly, staring down matter-of-factly at his handgun as he undid the safety. He put the barrel to Al's forehead. "Now tell me."

Al stared. His mouth went dry, and he swallowed hard and breathlessly.

"One."

Al's heaving chest stopped abruptly. He couldn't breathe—

"Two." The razor-sharp eyes didn't move. Alphonse's mind went blank. "Thr—"

"_I'm not Alphonse Elric!" _he screamed, ducking his head. "I'm Fletcher Tringham!"

Al's heart was nearly done for, and it was the only thing that filled his ears, the soldiers and dockhands silent. Elkhart stepped back a little. "You aren't—?"

Al was so damn grateful he'd never met this man before. "No!" His breaths heaved and his shoulders shook; he squeezed his eyes shut. "They told us—they told us to act like them, so that they could get something incredibly important done! We had no idea they were going to do _this!"_

Al stared up at him with wild eyes, praying that it would work. _Whatever "this" was._

The Brigadier General's eyes widened in horror, just like his mouth. He bent down on his knee and swept Al up next to his face. "Then they _are _doing this?" he demanded. "_Tell me where the Elrics are!_"

"_I don't know_!" Al cried, letting himself tremble for them. "I have to find Russell! He knows how to contact them!"

There was a moment where they both stared at each other, but then a shadow that fell over them. It was Maes Hughes, and Alex Louis Armstrong behind him.

"Alphonse Elric," Maes growled through his teeth, shaking with rage, "you _bastard!"_

His fist hit Al's face so hard that he was unconscious before his head ever rammed into the platform.

Away from them, Russell pulled his brother away from the balcony railing.

* * *

The man that claimed to be her little Edward was sitting about a foot from her feet. Riza, lying on the grass, unchained but unable to go anywhere because of him, simply glared at the long curve of his sickly slender back, his fidgety posture: like a teenager that wasn't completely in tune with his body's shapes and sizes. That, and the long, whispy ponytail that flipped in the slight wind and was nearly as light as his pale skin. He just couldn't be Edward. It wasn't _him._

He looked back at her suddenly. "What are you thinking?" he asked, holding his ankles. His cold, yellowish eyes barely stood out from the rest of him.

"You can't tell?" she spat. "The same thing I've been asking you this whole time: Who are you and what have you done with my husband."

He ticked his head, trying to pop his neck. "You shouldn't be worried about that." She came up a little—it was the first time he'd given any information at all. "He's not up and around to be worrying the same about you, that's for sure."

She stared incredulously at the back of his head as he considered the position of the sun. Al should have come by now, but he hadn't. It was a bit of a let down, that he wouldn't be able to string him up and stare at him for a while before he dissected him on the Third Day. Was he really gonna come to see him at all, though? The thought boiled irreconcilably in his blood, but he knew Al wouldn't let him down—he was, after all, dear little Al.

Finally, he turned his head back to Riza, his eyes regaining the slightly demonic leer they had held previously. That same devious smile playing onto his face, he bent over onto his elbows and put his ear against her navel. She readied to kick him in the face. "Did you know that you're going to have a baby?"

"What?"

He nodded against her softness, even as she tried to pull away. "But because of what happened those years ago, you're still going to suffer. What number is this? Four?"

Riza stared at him with bitter, terrified, and pained contempt. "You never got to tell Roy about them at all," he continued. "Debating every time. . . ." He locked his eyes with hers, and whispered what was wrong with this one.

She gasped and tried to push him back, but he didn't let her; horrified and trapped, tears come down. Even as Riza challenged him with her glare, her body needed someone to cling to, and the only man she'd want anywhere near the position this man was in was nowhere she needed him to be.

The blond shook his head away from her, tsking for a moment, almost as though he were sympathetic. Riza watched him carefully, though she shook under his hands. If she was quick enough, she could bite—

"Here, let me get rid of it for you."

His bare hand shoved under her shirt and ran over her abdomen. She wrenched away, and then kneed him in the gut. He fell back and she tore the rest of the way free, but he snatcher her ankle and dragged her back down. She brought her other foot down on his fingers, but they were solidly metal. She screamed down at him and tried to drive her heel into his head. "Don't you _dare _come near me, don't _touch _me!"

"But you don't want it to be born so _deformed, _do you?" he asked quite innocently, finally wrapping his arm around her other foot and then pouncing on top of her when she came up to punch his head. She hissed, and he smiled. "Or any of the other children in Central. I'll get rid of them all for you." He shook his head. "Really now."

He gained the ground, but he had a hard time keeping her down. "Really, you'll thank me later!" he growled, grunting as he repeatedly forced her arms down.

She clawed at his face, but managed nothing but angry red marks and disheveled hair. "Get _off _of me, don't touch me! _No_!"

Finally, gritting his teeth hard enough to force a headache, he gave up and called, "Alphonse!"

To Riza's horror, as she stared at the man bending over her, from the dark shadows directly behind him grew a figure.

"Yes, brother?" His wide eyes were wicked.

"Hold her down," he instructed, looking back for a moment. "I have to get this transmutation done."

"Yes, brother."

"No! _No_!" She wrenched one way and then the other as the man shifted onto her. He was substantially stronger and a hell of a lot more amused. "Don't touch my baby, dammit, _no_!"

The blond, next to her now, looked up at the end of her cry, considering the inside of her legs. "Do you know who Russell Tringham is?" he asked, almost gently.

She went very still under Alphonse, and the man chuckled at it. Ed, on the other hand, was tracing arrays against her stomach with his finger, outlining things from his memory.

"Russell is a man whose only book skill is alchemy, science. At all other things he has the smart man's deficiency, and no desire in the first place. From a young age, he had to support his younger brother, and over time he was forced into illegal alchemical experimentation by a man named Mugiar, the land baron of Xenotime. Mugiar's lust was for power, absolute power, and he decided he could get this from the Philosopher's Stone, and the way to get _that _was to put people into the mix: Feti. Unborn humans. Dear Russell was forced into putting catalyst—red water—into the water supply, into the women. Straight to the placenta, and out came partial stones at birth, along with a dead baby." He sounded rather lightly drawling about all of it, and he absently stroked his mouth while he traced even more elaborate designs. "He was a plague to his people, and they didn't even know it."

He traced something once, then again, and then in the air. He tipped his head, and then all vestiges of placidity erased from his face. He grinned down at her with a wicked smile, and wide, golden eyes.

"This is a variation of that."

"No! Stop, _stop it_!" He touched his palms together and leaned over her. Riza screamed, thrashed, begged him to see her eyes, to see her pleas, show anything to his humanity. But it wouldn't work, and she already knew it: There was no humanity for her to find.

"I was going to tell him!" she sobbed finally, salt tears exploring her cheeks, under the shadow of Alphonse's arms. "Stop it, just stop, _please_!"

But the light still flared, and she threw her head back and screamed.

* * *

a/n.

A ha ha ha ha, evil things are afoot! Sorry Riza. And look, it's Al! (-Insert love on Al-) Feel free to guess what Ed's up to; I probably spelled out waaay too many options back and forth; sorry about that; tell me if you think it's too much: I have trouble with "trusting the reader." So, I put in what I thought was logical, and slowed down the time in the piece enough to let you breathe for a while, and sense that time had passed. Okay, saying that, I guess maybe all I was doing was stalling for time. :)

Thanks again for continuing to read! Even if the fic's genesis _is _a little dated.

Last Edit: 8/2010


	5. Chapter 5: Day Two: His Madness

_a/n: Memorial 5, now with proper encoding!_

_ps: Random violence is better than random suedom, random pairings, and probably random smut, ... in my opinion. Don't say I didn't warn you. A ha ha.  
_

_There is a swear and violence warning for this chapter!_

* * *

Russell would have called the city's landscape barren, if it wasn't for the fact that everyone had dropped in the street. The dirt and red that coated everything, from the buildings to the people, made it seem like a city in which a prolonged war had been going on; the only missing piece was crumbled buildings and a haphazard arrangement of bodies. Once again, Russell shivered and rubbed the back of his neck.

He could have turned Xenotime into this.

Yet, all of these people were still _alive. _

If they were dead, he could deal with it: he could go into self-preservation mode, see them all as just _things. _ But this was like a malaria epidemic—rows and rows of people under white sheets, that he could do no more for than watch suffer.

They neared the square in front of the military's headquarters, where the Fuhrer's stage was still set. When he got close enough, Fletcher climbed onto the stage, and looked out at the view their leader would have seen. Unfortunately, what Fletcher saw only made him sigh.

"Here, too?" Russell asked. He looked down the street, and had to admit that here, too, as far as the eye could see, were fallen brethren.

There were two streets that intersected the pavilion. There was one to the right of them at ninety degrees, which they had come from, and then the one directly in front of them, that stretched for at least two miles directly south, to the top of the hill. Wide streets, flanked by three-story stone buildings held all the signs of life—colorful accents, flower boxes, shudders, bright doors, windows reflecting the sky—but there was a distinct difference that set the whole scene macabre.

The walls of the buildings were covered in red, streaking down but dried, like crusted remnants of rain. The cobbles of the street, too, were drenched a deep crimson, with the pavilion's white tiles stained the same, but the white tarps, alchemically pulled across the street's width and attached to the forsaken buildings at the top of the second stories, were the only thing stainless. They draped as far as the eye could see, a patchwork of white-ish material brought together as a temporary roof over the people that were supposed to _be_ in those houses: Under canvas shadows, lumps were laid out as far as the eye could see, shrouded by whatever cloths the remaining State Alchemists could transmute.

Away from Fletcher, the contents of Russell's stomach almost heaved itself out onto the long flight stairs. He was used to a great many things, but for some naive reason he had really hoped there would be something different around this corner.

Fletcher, meanwhile, was glancing around the square. While it was at least one hundred yards across, it was hemmed in by multiple government buildings. An occasional foot soldier ran by as they went about the city, but each was apparently too busy to give them a second look. Maybe they were just to frazzled to deal with other living beings, or thought they were the civilian-clothed State Alchemists, but whatever the case, they had been ignored until now, and he didn't want to jeopardize that by standing out in the middle of everything. They had things to do.

"Where would be a good place to watch for him from?" Fletcher asked his brother, coming off the stage and clapping his shoulder. "This old belltower—I know they haven't used it since before the rebellion. You think we can get in it?"

Taking a breath, Russell surveyed the tower's highest window, and then its balcony where a bell used to be. "If we can, we can figure out a second spot to watch for Al from, too," he said eventually.

". . . Russell, do you see that array?"

"Array? What?"

Fletcher pointed to a curving red splotch on the tower's side. "Look." He waited until his brother slowly inhaled a breath before Fletcher continued talking, heading for the tower. "What do you think it could be? It's written with the blood."

Russell made his way to the far side of the pavilion quickly, unable to overcome a cold apprehension as he came closer. Fletcher, catching up behind him, squinted to make out the shapes. "Water, air; what's that little squiggly thing in the middle? It looks vaguely like a curled-up salamander. But that's for fire. . . ."

Russell drew up short when he came close enough to make out the details and words. He had too much work in Xenotime not to know immediately what that was.

He was still holding his breath when Fletcher continued, perplexed, behind him: "Saturn, sun, the moon. . . . Russell! Is this for human transmutation?"

Russell grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him toward the tower's door. "No, no it couldn't be," he rambled off quickly. "The military wouldn't let that be there if it was. And anyway, why would it be on an abandoned building? C'mon, let's see if we can get the door open, I'll take the first watch if it is."

* * *

B.His Madness

* * *

Going home where there should have been people was the worst feeling in the world. Two bodies spilled across the kitchen tiles, lain exactly where they had stood as the transmutation washed over them.

Where it took them apart.

Maes locked his jaw and nodded to Havoc.

Alphonse found himself conscious with a start, suddenly freezing cold and wet.

_"Wake up!" _

"It's not his fault you hit him so hard, General," Havoc offered to calm his rage, wincing a little.

Maes came forward on the table and wrapped his fist around Al's shirt, growling. "I know you're _awake_, Alphonse;_ open your eyes_."

The suggestion was enough to stir Al's flustered thoughts. He tried to do as commanded, but then moaned and hunched up when the pain in his head rammed into his nerves. He blacked out again for a moment, his mind reeling as it went in and out of being able to feel the injuries covering his body. He let his head hang down after a while and groaned; the noise, while hard on his headache, seemed to ease the pressure enough to stay conscious in the blackness behind shut eyes. Alphonse's every nerve prickled or burned, and even behind his shut eyes he saw a cloud of stars. It was difficult to even breathe.

Maes felt another pang of idiocy and guilt, but it only made his frustration worse. Finally, watching Al, half-conscious, shiver in a ball and gasp for breath, he nodded and had Havoc throw another bucket of ice water.

This time, Al's eyes flew open and he sat gasping in shock, limbs shaking badly. Maes cupped Al's chin sharply and stared him down. "Are you or are you not the _real _Alphonse Elric?"

Al stared up with his brown eyes, pulled forward by the chin with his wrists bound behind the back of the chair, and his feet tied together. He watched Maes as he drank in deep, haggard breaths, until finally he managed to steady his breathing. "Yes."

Maes released him and sat back on the metal table a foot away, nodding vaguely, contemplative. Then, he whipped out his handgun and cocked it at Al's forehead.

Al jerked back but was trapped against the chair. "If you are the_ real _Alphonse Elric, and you are absolutely innocent, by God, I'm sorry, but if you aren't, I'm telling you now, I have no tolerance for people who try to kill anyone I care for. One way or another, if you do not help me, you will _ die._"He tipped Alphonse's head back, and narrowed his eyes. "Roy is dying from something a man calling himself Ed has done. Most of the town is soulless, and the rest of us are not safe. If you do not get me to Ed, I will use your dead body as bate for him."

Al's eyes went wide. Capturing their gaze, Hughes reclaimed his grip on Al's chin. "Now. Do you have anything to do with this?"

Al shook his head, half-frozen droplets of water sliding from his skin. "No. . . ."

Maes tapped Al's forehead and crossed his legs. Al tried to blink the heavy metal away before closing his eyes and trying to pull himself together. "So tell me," Maes continued, almost disinterestedly. "Who are you?"

Al sucked in a breath, and chanced to put his eyes over Havoc's way, taking measure of the ropes that tied his hands to the back of the chair as he spoke. "I'm Alphonse Elric," he whispered, grinding his teeth in frustration. "Put in a metal shell for five years, after my brother, Edward Elric, lost his leg trying to bring our mother back to life, and his arm, saving me."

Hughes nodded, and suddenly drew the gun back. He held it about a foot away, aimed at the ceiling, but he still had hold of Al's jaw. "When did Edward wake up?"

Al's eyes shot up to him sharply, and just as quickly stared back down, searching the stone floor for an answer. In an instant, the gun was thrust against his browbone again.

_"Now," _Maes warned.

"I . . . I . . . I don't . . ." Al's voice cracked, and he choked on a sob. He couldn't stop shivering, he couldn't stop thinking anything but _Cold_.His body was locking up from cold, including his mouth. "I . . . I don't _ know, _Hughes! That's what . . . I came here to_ find out. . . ." _

"Ahh, so we're getting somewhere." Maes smiled, pulled back the gun, but it was a jackal smile Al never wanted to see. "You're looking for Ed, too. Weren't you watching over him?"

Al's eyes snapped shut, and he jerked visibly multiple times, as the gears turned over in his memory. His jaw tightened; each time he was about to say something, his forehead touched the gun anew and he recoiled violently.

Hughes pushed Al's head back slightly, and perverse pleasure crept into the back of his mind. "You got_ tired _of it, didn't you? Of taking care of him?"

Al twitched. "You don't know anything about it!"

"You_ left _him."

"You know _nothing!"_Al snarled. "Don't talk like you do! Yes, Yes I resented it, okay! How dare you talk like it's wrong of me to have a life! It's what he gave up his for!"

Hughes stared at him in amazement and was quiet for a moment. He released Al—deny him any human touch at all—and looked over at Havoc. The man shared his surprise.

"Oh fucking _ what, _Havoc,_"_ Al snarled. "How _dare _you say it's _ wrong _of me to not be stuck in a pit of despair like the rest of _you! _I watched over him, it's not like I abandoned him! I hoped every day he would wake up! You know better than I do that sometimes you just have to stop your sorrow and be _realistic._" His smoldering eyes turned from Jean to Maes, and he _snarled_.

"He did _ not _sacrifice_ everything _just so that I could _ cry _over him. Don't even _ try _this bullshit on me, you cannot convince me I'm some sort of unfeeling_ monster; _I've done that enough already!_"_

Havoc winced and looked to Hughes, but Al cut him off. "Untie me, Hughes, and let me _go,_"he hissed. "You have absolutely _no _grounds to hold me and even _less t_o have attacked me on the train! Untie me _right now _before I have you courtmarshalled!"

Hughes, who had been having a stare down with Al, chuckled. And then broke eye contact altogether in order to _laugh._"Oh Alphonse," he said, pressing the black metal weapon into Al's temple. "You act like you're gonna be around to be a witness."

Al's mouth dropped open, and Hughes continued. "Why did you lie about who you were at the train station?"

"Because your fucking _gun-happy LG _wanted to bag himself a very _dead _non-combatant—Havoc, if he kills me you _know_ he'll kill you too—"

"Alphonse!" Hughes cracked him on the head and physically redirected his attention back to himself, grabbing him by the chin.

Al's spinning eyes squeezed shut, but it hardly stopped him. "Okay, Hughes, I lied because there was a goddamned fucking gun at my head_ just like now—!" _

"Shh." Hughes held his threatening gaze for a long, very long time. His finger twitched on the trigger every once in a while, and every time, Al jerked; eventually, he made a game of it. Havoc shifted uncomfortably behind him after a while, and when Maes felt he'd had enough, he set his gun back on the table, though he still had his finger in the trigger loop as he leaned back on his hand.

The way he sized Alphonse up made it entirely apparent that he was considering how easy it would be to put a bullet in Al's chest, now that he was flesh again. He'd barely ever seen that, aside from a few badly weathered family photos in a file. Internally, he shook his head; wouldn't it be a shame, if those two round-faced children may have turned out to be bad apples?

He shifted his weight on his arms. "I'm going to give you one chance. Are you going to cooperate with us?"

"I'm here to find my brother," Al said. His jaw was locking up from the cold, the shivering becoming erratic spasms under his wet clothes, but his eyes, dark in the low light, were still burning.

"I have no idea what's been going on in Central," he offered. "What's wrong with the Fuhrer?"

"Before I tell you that," Maes began,"because you are a skilled enough alchemist that you might be able to help me, what was that in your suitcase?"

Al's mouth opened, and then he shut it, quickly. "Something I need to talk to the Fuhrer about," he articulated stiffly.

"Ah-huh." Maes nodded. "Then we must approach the subject that Ed not only attacked the Fuhrer twice, but he also set the _entire _body of inhabitants of this city in a transmutation that has indisposed nearly_ all _of them, and he said that you were with him. What am I supposed to make of that, the incomplete Philosophers Stones in your bag, and that the transmutation in your notes is on the side of the belltower your brother was crucified by?"

Al's brow creased heavily, but then he caught himself and leaned back, eyeing Hughes carefully. He still winced whenever he moved, but if Hughes was going to give him this leeway, he damn well was going to use it against the man. "I don't know what to tell you; I don't know what he's doing. He could've seen my notes; what he said could be to_ incriminate _me, so that you do what you're doing now. . . ."

"You think so."

"I do."

"You know, the uncouth look doesn't work so well with half your face purple." Hughes said without so much as even looking at Al; he dusted off his gun with gloved hands while Al's carefully manicured countenance fell. "So why did you bring those notes here?"

Al snorted and glared furiously at the wall. "So you think that I'm part of this."

"That, and Ed's going to jail for a very long, long time, if he doesn't get _killed_ first."

Al's jaw tightened. A chill went down his back. "Why would you do that, Hughes?"

"Because I have to protect this country."

"If you want to do that, then I suggest you let me _go_." Al looked up at him coldly. "I'm going to take my brother home, and I won't take no for an answer. And that includes_ his._ I have no idea what he's doing, I have no idea what's going _on, _but I'm the only one that can stop him."

"Okay, assuming that's true," Hughes dictated slowly, "How can we trust you, Al?"

"How can you _not _trust me?" Al squeaked. "You _know_ I was on that train! Hell, have some common sense! All the military's_ ever _done is fuck with my life; why would I be lying _ now,_when someone's finally carrying_ out _that threat on my life!"

Hughes grabbed his shirt collar. "My wife and child are lying in _comas _because of him!" He dropped his weapon and wrapped his hand around Al's neck, pressing as hard as he could without breaking the bones. Al choked and recoiled; Havoc stepped forward, but delayed himself from acting. Hughes continued, bending over his captive. "I will not tolerate terrorist threats from the likes of you, Alphonse Elric!"

He released Al only to shove the end of the gun into Al's sternum. "What do you think of that," he seethed, referring to his wife.

Al narrowed his eyes and straightened his back. "That was not a_ threat _Hughes. But if you want one: If you hurt me, everyone will _suffer_. Ed will make sure you all _die. _If you let me _go _I will have the best chance to stop him and maybe, I won't even ruin all of your careers afterwards." He laughed. "Just because you didn't know where I was all this time does not mean some other, very loud, citizens did not."

Hughes shook his head, slowly at first, and then wider. Then, he placed one iron hand on Al's shoulder, and pressed one steel-toed foot over Al's. Next, to Al's querrilous look, he smiled and shoved the weapon between Al's legs. "It's very obvious that you have_ something _to do with this. And you are not getting away from us. I want you to think very, very hard about this: I can start breaking your fingers either _before _or_ after _I shoot your nuts."

Al winced, hard.

"Sir—" Havoc stepped forward, concerned. "You don't—"

"Shut up, Havoc," he said, never taking his eyes off of his captive.

"Yeah," Al agreed; he had more thoughts about how, whatever Havoc could reason, Hughes was obviously going to do whatever the hell he wanted, but his retorts were quite easily lost in the white haze blanking his mind.

Havoc decided to take a different route. "Why did he take Riza?" He asked from the side. "Was it to trade for you, in case this happened?_"_

Al shook his head. The pressure in his crotch eased up, enough to let him think. He turned slightly, enough so that he could keep both of them in view, his eyes huge. "Think about it Havoc. What sense would it make to have that sort of contingency, and have me be dumb enough to enter the city in such an obvious way?"

"What do you mean," Havoc pressed gently.

"I'm saying that I know nothing about that," he answered softly. "I hope she's okay."

Hughes rolled his eyes and slammed the butt of his gun into Al's cheekbone. After the white lights stopped dancing in his brain, Al found himself clutched by the throat. "What were you doing on the train, then?" Maes growled, hot breath condensing on his face. Al opened his mouth, but the grip got tighter. Maes moved in, nose to nose, and pressed the base of his palm into Alphonse's vocal chords. "Red stones in your briefcase, and a convenient alibi? What happened, Al, Ed showed you a plan but you didn't want a part? What _is _this, a little _fight? _You think you can just screw with people's lives like that!"

Al choked, gagging on his breaking neck. Havoc stood to the side, his hands half raised, but silent. Hughes bent closer. "Or maybe, you're the one that planned all this; you recreated Ed and you're using him to exact vengeance against us?" Maes's hand slid upwards, exchanging pain for syphoning blood. Al couldn't grab for his throat, his hands still bound and crushed into his back; with the blood only half making it to his mind, gasping wasn't getting him anywhere, either. He was still struggling with thinking when Maes started talking again.

"This is your one chance, Alphonse," he vowed, placing his gun between Al's eyes. "Where. Is. Edward."

Under his hand, Maes felt Al try to work his throat; he let off a little, but barely.

"I don't know," Al sucked in a breath, but then stared at Hughes, hard and defiant. "But you can go to fucking hell!"

Maes took his gun, long-barreled and heavy in his hand, and pressed it against Al's skull at arm's length. Those accusing brown eyes were something he never wanted to see again.

"Not. Good Enough."

Those eyes were still burning.

His pulled the trigger.

* * *

It was nearly midnight dark in the cemetery, he noted as he looked up at the sky. The stars were out, but the moon was no where to be seen, and he missed its light. He was sure Riza did, too, even though her eyes were tightly closed, forcing away all that was around her. She needed it to keep her tearing psyche together.

He leaned back a little more on his hands, then looked at her. The noises coming from her were hardly pleasant, but it was kind of fitting, in his mind, how it was disrupting the stagnant night air.

Letting out an even breath, he rolled to his feet and went to her. "You're doing it all wrong. Here." He sat on his heels and held up her back with his hand, and put his other just under her chest. She spasmed, and he touched his forehead to hers and pressed the array again.

With a high, strained cry, Riza threw her head back against a heavy contraction. Something large and warm broke from between her legs and spilled out onto the ground.

Ed instantly left her, letting Riza curl up and fend for herself as he went the other direction. He picked up the mass before Riza could get her mind around what had happened. On her elbows, she watched him through a distorted veil of fat, sick tears.

"Ah!" he beamed abruptly, lifting the mass in his hands, "The deformation!"

She couldn't see it, yet his triumphant, foreboding grin glittered. But the man simply laughed a little, happily, and then leaned forward on his knees and dug through the dirt where she couldn't see.

The tears were hot, and the pain was harsh and suppressive, worse than the loss of any of them before. She sobbed. Roy wasn't_ here. _

Everything was gone. "At least tell me if it's a girl or boy," she screamed at his back.

He stood up and stared at her, then, after a moment, shrugged. "Neah."

She cried into her hands. There was no strength in her lower half to attack with.

"Oh come on, it's not that bad now, is it? I just did you a favor," the man offered in a mockery of solace. He checked around for any clothes he had taken off from under her dress, and then shooed at her. "C'mon, you can go home now."

She stared at him, wide-eyed. He made the motion again. "We're done. Go home."

She stared at him, then with a cry dug her nails into his leg and ripped them down the skin.

_ "Ow!" _He tried to shake her off, but then grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her up to his face. "I just did you a_ favor, _what are you _ hurting _me for!"

His squeaking voice suddenly sounded like Ed's had six years ago. Her fingers jerked off of him and he let her drop, after touching her legs to the ground. "Now sit still or leave, or else I'll have to sick Alphonse on you again." He flipped his head and motioned for the man, who appeared from the shadow of a tombstone. Ed motioned to Riza. "Hold her down."

"What? No–!"

"This isn't for you, anyway," he grumbled, already distracted. "Forgive me if I help." He stopped and checked his watch impatiently.

While Al struggled with her and then got her down, his voice floated over his shoulder. "You know, I don't think He's going to be able to come see us."

"Yeah, if he hasn't already, he won't." Ed sighed tersely, cocking his hips. "He's smarter than that. Something's gotta be holding him back. He should know where we _are_. . . ."

"Hughes." Al offered, a bit contemptuously, then whispered in Riza's ear: "Stop struggling. Or it'll hurt when I tie you _up._"

"Like fuck I care if you do _that_!" Riza screamed. As Al's hand went for her mouth, she forced her teeth into his hand. Then, she jammed her leg into his crotch in the moment of weakness that followed, threw him off and sprang to her feet.

_ "Dammit,"_ Al spat from his knees; Ed turned around placidly and smiled at the woman's back. To his right, Al sucked in a breath, and then started laughing.

"Like she can get away."

Ed's smile curved higher as he touched his gloved fingers together and placed his left hand against the tree next to him. Light streamed down the trunk and followed Riza through the black grass, until it jumped out at her heels, twisting the blades into ropes as it went.

Al turned to his brother, left hand on his hip. "You know, that may not be what's keeping him back. He's been missin' a few pieces, ever since—"

"You have no proof of that," Ed snapped.

"Ohhh,_ yes _I do," Al twirled his finger by his ear as he started off toward Riza. "I don't really think he can play well with others anymore. . . ."

By the time they wandered over to Riza, the transmutation had bound her entirely immobile. With her blood still wet it wasn't pretty by any means, but Al was quick to sigh and pick her up, his hand over her mouth.

He turned to Ed as the blond man spoke, spine against the trunk of an old maple tree. His light blond ponytail trailed down his side in the breeze as though it floated.

Riza screamed at him through Al's hand, but he easily ignored the sounds. "I'm going to get the rest of the town," Ed drawled to his brother, shining his nails on his blue uniform jacket. Then he looked up at the sky, rather thoughtfully. ". . . Now that I know it works."

"Whatever," Alphonse offered, his eyes glowing with the red-glinting passion of excitement. "I'll be there soon, brother."

On the highest hill of the cemetery stood a platform, an abandoned podium—in the twilight darkness, he could see the tiny lights of Central City's few remaining inhabited buildings wink in the night, all whilst cold night air stung persistently through his overcoats.

"This cemetery . . . ," he whispered, holding a warm, jagged red stone to his heart and feeling it pulse, "where the fallen soldiers and the lost innocents of this city have come to rest . . ."

He ducked his head against that stone, holding it just a little way from his body. ". . . Give me strength, so I can help the ones that still survive."

A body appeared out of the shadows, crunching frosted grass as he made his way along the hill. "I tied up Riza."

The other nodded, then looked up thoughtfully. "You know, my speech is a lot shorter than Mustang's."

"Well, you never did have a way with words."

"Hey," he warned, turning back with a contemptuous frown, _"you_ don't get to say that." He folded his arms, feigning hurt. "After all, I'm dedicating this to you: 'A day for the wounded, those left behind'—that's you, Alphonse."

"Oh really?" Al snorted. "I thought I was in the ones taking care?"

Ed grumbled irratitatedly and waved his hand. "Whatever, you bounce around; shut up." Ed danced a little in the cold, looking out over the town and shaking his head. "Damn that Mustang's tricky. We all kind of fit in everything, don't we."

"He always beats you in everything involving thought," Al said, tonelessly. "Can we start the mayhem yet?"

Ed snorted off his slight and from his folded arms produced a dark, bloody stone. He held it out, fixating on its depths as it started to float above his hand. "Souls." He laughed. "That's a good one."

"It is." Al's subsequent soft chuckling drifted into the cemetery's night, and Ed stared out over the hills, to the little yellow squares of light holding out against the darkness.

"It's time."

Alphonse stepped just behind his brother, and after a moment of watching him without a word, turned around and leaned his back against the man's. His head drifted up, to behold the twinkling stars. "Will I be able to come back out?"

"I don't know," Ed answered honestly. "If it drains too much . . . I'll have to do the last leg on my own."

". . . Mm."

"I hope you do." Ed offered, knocking his head back against Al's. "Every time . . . you're what wakes me from this horrible dream."

"H'mmn."

Alphonse leaned back, closing his eyes and letting his weight go. He sighed, and Ed did the same; there was nothing but wet cold, like falling into an icy lake. A ripple . . . and then Ed was alone.

"A first day, dressed in red: 'For those who watch over us still.' A second day, for the blessed that yet suffer: for 'those still afflicted. . . ,' who can't escape and can't stop being reminded. Alphonse—"

Ed held the stone at arm's length, and it pulsed above his upturned palm, in front of a city nearly dark.

"—For all those still injured by my inability to stop it. This one's for you."

He clapped his hands together.

* * *

Al jerked violently, but Maes held him up. It took Al a while of gasping, and Maes a while of looking at him, for them to both realize he was still alive.

Maes let him fall and while he lay folding in on himself on the floor, hyperventilating and seizing, Hughes stared at his gun. "Huh."

"General!"

_"Quiet." _Hughes undid the latch and pulled out his clip; the bullets were perfectly in place, one after another of copper hulls and silver tips. . . . He looked in the empty chamber from the back, sighed, and shrugged helplessly. It was a new clip: either it was a loading problem, or it must have been missing one from a full stock. Still, there was usually one left in the chamber between and old clip and a new, so how this had happened. . . .

Still considering his options, he looked toward Alphonse, whose eyes were as wide as a trapped deer's. "_Jesus _Hughes, you're fucking _crazy!" _Al screamed from the floor, shoving himself up into a sitting position, farther and farther back, ignoring the ripping of wounded flesh in the process. He ran into something hard; Havoc's legs—the man wasn't pleased, not that he moved. Al squeaked up at him, desperate--_just catch his eye, this was Havoc for Christ's sake!--_but he got nothing. Looking up at Havoc made him realize that his neck and torso were exposed; he hastily moved to protect himself. Unfortunately, all that he saw was Maes, standing with his weight to one side, tapping his unloaded weapon on his blue-uniformed thigh.

"In case you didn't _notice _Alphonse," he ground out,"_there is an army's worth of people out there that your __brother__ probably_—!"He stopped suddenly, and gritted his teeth. Then, he reached into his back pocket and produced another clip, quickly slipped into the casing. "One more is a statistic."

Al's mouth dropped. "You _can't _be—"

"Alphonse." Maes pulled back the safety, and readied the weapon. "Now."

"What, what!" Al scurried back. He couldn't remember the question, and_ no _he_ hadn't _seen everyone around _ because "I've been __unconscious__ because of __you,__ what the __hell__ Maes, what the fucking hell do you __want__ from me! I don't know what's going on, If you would just let me leave I could _fix all this! What do you _want__!" _

Maes bent down on one knee and pulled Al up by his red shirt. He put the gun muzzle against Al's jaw hard, but then drew it around, languidly, to under his chin; then he decided to rest it against Al's Adam's Apple with a calculated, raven's stare.

"Keep going," he prodded.

Al was shaking so badly he could hardly get the words from his mouth. His head, his whole body, hurt to the point where each throb nearly wiped out his train of thought. But there was no way he was going to let them take Ed down after all this time. No way in hell. They had to know what was at stake here—?!

"Hughes," he shuddered out, closing his eyes and praying, his hands weakly clutching Havoc's pantleg behind him. "Has anyone . . . actually_ died _yet. . . ?"

There was a pause, a time in which the next moment Alphonse was sure the breathing keeping him alive would shatter into a burst of pain and wet, gasping red spilling down his skin.

Then, suddenly, the barrel connected to his forehead, between the eyes. He jerked back, tried to shove back or get away, but there was nowhere to go, and Hughes took his jaw and held him still.

"Alphonse," he began sharply, but became cool enough to draw the next words out, "Tell me _everything_ you know about why Ed's here, from the beginning. You only get one chance. I don't care who you were. There's only who you are_ now_."

_ You don't know Anything! _He almost sobbed it out. _Why won't you just leave me alone?_ Suddenly, he got the image of the child he had been years ago, huddled in a corner and crying over his armored existence outside his comatose brother's medical room. The fear, the pain. . . . The hot desire to _live. _

_Am I going to die without my eyes open? _

He opened his mouth, but it was Havoc who spoke.

"Sir, please don't get his blood on me."

Al went cold, unable to breathe. Hughes assented just as dryly as his underling had spoken, and hauled his prisoner to his feet, pushing him against the wall. If he left him against the floor, he might just give up and die.

It had happened before, after all.

One of Maes's strong hands planted against Al's sweaty chest and held him to the rough, damp bricks; despite the fact that it made his skin crawl with fear, Al was glad for it. Without it, he never would have stood.

He glanced over at Havoc during this trip, who looked sympathetic enough. _ Right. Break it up a little. Calm us down. _Al blinked hard against the throbbing in his head, his jittery limbs; just to get sensation, he ran the fingers of his bound hands against the rough, damp stone jutting into his back. Maes moved the pistol point up and tipped Al's head back, to stare at the ceiling. He knew Maes could feel his heavy, erratic heartbeat through the hand that pinned him to the wall; there was no hiding that. Al shifted a bit, squirming and unable to breathe, while he worked over what to say. "I'll start . . . from the top..."

He bit his lip, and prayed.

"But first, there's something I've got to tell you."

"Yes?" Hughes probed carefully.

_ I will not let my last breath on this earth be like this. _

Al closed his eyes. He pressed his palms together behind his back, a strange twisted feat he prayed no one else could witness. When the straining blood in his heart was about to break its bounds, he opened his eyes and looked on his old friend.

"Ed would never kill Elisia. Where is she."

Hughes recoiled back in silence. Barely held up by his own legs, Al watched after him with hard eyes. "It's ingrained in him deeper than his love of me."

Hughes nodded, bowing his head even as he shook. Then, instead of Hughes backing away further and being released, Al found a fist in his stomach. It went deep enough that he felt something tear.

"She's out there, dead just like everyone else!" Hughes yelled over Al's head as he draped over his arm like a coat.

Another blow, a few more words, and Al's equillibrium failed him; his head jerked this way and that regardless of where the rest of his body landed, with momentary jolts of white light behind his eyes keeping him from putting up any kind of defense.

Blood was starting to smear across Hughes gloves; feeling flesh give way beneath his power was suddenly feeling all too good. His captive wasn't even on the ground when his drawn-back arm was caught, and Havoc threw him through the cell's door. The man managed to get the three inches of steel slammed shut before his officer spun on his heel at him.

"What is the meaning of this!" Maes growled.

"You're going to_ kill _him if you keep hitting him like that, Sir!" Havoc grabbed his wrist and brought his bloody knuckles up for his to see. "Look at that!_ Look at that_before you _tell _me this is all right with you!"

Hughes took one deep, irreconcilable breath and then yanked his arm away. "There is no _point," _he hissed. He turned back to the room.

"Wait!"

_ "What, _Major," he warned, hackles up.

"Give me _three _seconds, and _then _tell me everything you're doing is all right with you," he pleaded.

Hughes stared him down, and after a string of vile thoughts, he heard the number three somewhere in the irreverent universe. "You're letting your feelings for them get in the_ way," _he seethed, more sure of this than anything he had been in days. "Now let me_ go._ He's hiding a _lot—" _

He went forward, but Havoc stayed behind him. "I can't condone this—"

"You don't _have _to," Maes shot back. "You're a soldier. Now stop telling me you think we deserve this and keep going." He seethed. "So long as there are people alive, there are people to save from his madness."

He made sure his yellow eyes bore into Havoc's heart, hoping he tore it apart. "Did you see what he was doing behind his back or were you too busy being emotional! He was going to transmute!_ Without a circle. _If he can transmute like Ed could, then we know what happened to Ed."

Havoc stared at him in disbelief. Hughes dared him to challenge him. "What we need to know now is which one's behind this!"

Havoc shook his head. "But then, why is Al still whole?"

"He may not have lost any of his _body. _He may have just lost _ his mind." _He shook his head. "But to risk it, after all of his past. . . . He may have lost it long before that.

"Havoc, he's a menace. We've got to kill him to make this go away."

"But what if . . . it's not him? If he can resurrect everyone? Hell, they're not even _ dead_—"

"This is just a _game _to them!" Hughes snapped. "_What_ is the _only thing _you can think of, that they would use empty bodies against us for? Can you get that through your _head _Major? Even if you believe that maniac's coming around to help us, what the hell is he saving us from! You heard Al in there—he_ hates _us! I bet you _anything _they were going to come in here and play us, one good one bad, just to make it that more horrible when the one turns and we lose everything. Havoc, one way or the other if we don't stop him, by the time this is over we're all going to be dead and this is going to be nothing but a ghost town, and we will have been fighting our resurrected loved ones! Everyone and every_thing_ we know is going to be mixed up in his damn Philosopher's Stone!"

To Havoc's amazement and horror, as Hughes clenched his lapel so hard his knuckles turned white, the man was starting ... to _cry_.

When he locked eyes with the man again, he was more than a little afraid. "There is a time, Major, when you have to recognize losses and go on from them. Sometimes the soldiers won't survive, but they'll win the war for everyone else that remains unbroken." He took a shaky breath through his nose and straightened his back. "Roy lost sight of that."

It took Havoc a long moment to get over the fact that Hughes had thoroughly abandoned them. However, he realized that his commander was waiting for an answer.

Slowly, as evenly as he could, he said, "I realize that." Hughes nodded and turned for the door, but as his hand reached the steel, Havoc called out, "But I think we have the solution in there. The Fuhrer missed that, too."

"And_ I _think we have half the problem." Hughes growled. "And which one of us is still standing?" He disappeared inside.

Al, a large portion of his face either purple or stark white, instantly looked up from where he had been staring at the dents in the metal table at which he sat. The look Hughes received indicated he not only expected someone else, but would have greeted them with severely less trepidation.

"Where's Hav—"

"Al." Hughes tapped his gun at his side, readying to use it. "If you died, would Ed stop his rampage, or would that make it worse?"

Very slowly, Al quietly looked aside. "He would get his revenge," he said. "And then he would stop."

It was then that Havoc came in the door.

"He would crack and die."

Al suddenly found himself staring down a dark, round tunnel.

"Good."

_"General—!"_

_We're already his targets. _

Al didn't know what came first—the coldness, the gunshot's crack, or the pink light.

* * *

In the tower at the southwest corner of the pavilion, Russell Tringham watched his brother ascend the stairs to the top of the belltower.

"How's it going?" he asked as he ducked around where the bell would have been and got to the square, stone platform the younger resided in. "Seen any movement yet?"

Fletcher shook his head, closing the mirrored makeup compact they were using to flash signals to each other from across headquarters, sticking it in his pocket and in its stead producing an apple. While the town's people had been incapacitated, all the food sitting around had been spared from the transmutation. They ate well, even if they were technically stealing it. But, if the owners of the open-air shops were still around in a month, they'd pay them. Fletcher took a bite of the fruit and sighed. "No. I haven't seen anyone moving Alphonse at all."

_Body or otherwise,_ his disgruntled snort implied.

Russell sighed and leaned against the railing, overlooking the military's headquarters. This old tower hadn't been used in years, and the military didn't have near enough people to even guard the pavilion. There was no one watching over it, no one to see them in it. With most of the town evacuated, it was just them up here in the stiff March wind, waiting to see "Alphonse's" fate.

As he took lunch from his brother's stores, Russell found his voice excessively hollow.

"They're probably torturing him," Russell muttered, his chin cupped in his palm. "I just hope he doesn't come out_ dead."_

_And what do we do if he does. _

"Al's capable. He wouldn't get killed by his old comrades," Fletcher shrugged.

"Mn," Russell assented with a grunt; his brother continued staring at the stone floor in silence and munching on the different pieces of a sandwich separately. At the end of the world, eating in rote order seemed utterly inane.

Russell swept his fingers along the iron railing, the pink crystals fused to the metal. They adhered to everything, piled up and stuck together like drying clumps of sand. He pressed his finger to the grains, and brought it to his mouth. There was no iron, no bitter taste of blood. Had Ed managed to refine the creation of the Philosopher's Stone so much so that it took absolutely nothing from the person but their soul? But then there'd be no catalysts in the Stone, and it would be useless. . . . Russell's head dipped down, staring at the red-covered pavement, bodies, and government buildings. There was nothing in the human body that was supposed to be sweet like antifreeze or lead. So then, this thing Ed made . . . was it even a Stone at all?

. . . What if he was just making the Stone in separate parts?

"He has no reason to kill anyone, does he?" Russell asked Fletcher suddenly.

"Not unless it's over a regret." The boy tossed his head back, glancing at his brother. "And that's only if he's a ghost. You know, drag down the source of it back to the afterlife with him?" He looked at his sandwich for a moment, tipped it this way and that, and then shrugged. "But if he's alive . . . you'd have to be pretty twisted to go after the people you were fighting for?"

"You don't seem very bothered by all this," Russell said.

"You live or you die." Fletcher shrugged. "We are here: in this situation, now. There's no point in worry about what was or what could be with our lives if we avoided this incident. Besides: the change in Ed interests me in an intellectual way."

He would never understand his brother. He was far too concrete for that.

Russell shivered and went back to the railing to brood over the grey and red city. "What the hell are you_ doing _Ed?" he whispered. His eyes trailed over the streaks of red cemented to the buildings. _Are you going to spare anyone from your resolve, in the end?_

_Are you going to take me away before I can atone? _

They were quiet for a while, until Russell suddenly bristled.

"Oh shit—"

The air grew cold. The temperature plummeted in a wave, and on the heel of the front came a surge, that cleared the sky of clouds and echoed a _boom_._  
_

Yet, the new sky changed color: the world grew a ghastly pink. Massive symbols poured over the buildings, the people, the pavement, and kept going as far as the city sprawled. Then, as even Russell's shuddering skin glowed iridescent with the color, the sky turned utterly black.

The wind started to spiral and howl. Russell jerked his hands up to cover his ears, but fighting to stay standing against the wind immobilized him by the time they reached halfway. The array's growth was slowing on the ground below him, and that more than anything else scared him out of his muddying mind. He watched the lines for one second, two; the spinning of the array inexorably slowed. Russell looked to Fletcher. His brother was staring at him, wild-eyed, where the blood on his shirt had been the day before: if anyone was marked for death, it would be he. Never before had Russell so sharply understood why he should be afraid for his life then when this massive array was about to swallow him up, a nameless ingredient for someone's desires.

Fletcher was yelling something, but it was a completely visual sensation. Every second, Russell could feel a beat of his heart throbbing harder in his chest. His mind was opening: he was acutely aware of how the muscles pumped his blood through his body, how his blood went to his every cell, and how every cell functioned to keep him alive. . . . Then, it was like there was a hand squeezing his heart, until suddenly, it stopped.

There was a moment of utter silence, when the universe ceased. The transmutation worked into place.

His brother's voice came through the darkness. "Russell!"

In the next moment, a vortex ripped through their shelter, nearly throwing Russell into the stairwell. Just beyond them above headquarters, pink light gathered from the ground and burned into the back of Russell's eyes. A ball of it—first a pinprick and then increasingly bigger in the sky—surrounded by trails and trails of light, grew above the building—the exact center of the city.

And then suddenly, Russell realized that what was gathering into that ball was the red grains caked onto the buildings. Like water falling_ up, _pieces ignited into tendrils the hot-pink color of the array and being drawn to the ball. Under his hands that gripped the railing, pieces of red brightened and then slipped, drawn toward the center.

As Russell stared at his hands, his entire body began to glow from the inside. Before his horrified eyes, the world turned purple. The wind switched direction in a moment, and the pink ball affixed to the sky, now muted by encroaching violet light, blossomed. It splintered into innumerable teardrop pieces that spidered across the entire sky. They descended fast into the bodies in the streets, the white tarps long since blown away. They smacked into the earth like rain hitting puddles, though what they descended into were people's chests. They disappeared, leaving only a momentary ripple of light below each vapid body.

Systematically the projectiles went out from the center, and like a rolling storm, slowly became but a growl in the distance. Russell watched it in awe, only to realize that the transmutation was still going.

He whipped back around to see the center of the array as the last of the pink hail was thrown out. A clear clap of thunder burst from the light. Russell's mind cleared instantly, as though there had never been anything in it, just in time to see the ball collapse and explode horizontally. It reminded him of a sunrise and a sunset all at once.

Before he could see anything else, a flash of pink light illuminated their tower room and nailed Russell in the chest. It felt like a hammer hitting him, crushing bones, but as his mind blanked out, the reaction held him up. Cold swept over him like water would, thick streams running down the back of his neck and into the rest of his body, pulling around to his front and sides as well. The cold threads twisted into his veins, racing into every inch of his body, until, just as he thought he would freeze, every cell ignited with heat. He fell to his knees, pushing at his chest to stop the painful, sudden palpitating of his engorged heart. His vision swimming, he tipped over the rest of the way and fell into the concrete, immobile on his side. He could feel things twisting inside the arm of his he could see, hot to the point of comforting.

The feeling quickly spread over his shoulders and into his organs, his head. . . . Fuzzy, he watched his arm laid out in front of him. Pink tendrils spiraled up out of his skin and into the cuts and scars that adorned his limb. The glowing tendrils danced and whirled there, and just as quickly went back into his body, leaving nothing but unblemished flesh behind.

Russell sighed and closed his eyes, letting them rest and his mind fall. He had the strangest feeling that there was someone else there, someone else's life force beating with his own.

As the warmth pulled his mind down, he heard a voice:

_My people, wake up, so that you can _see.

* * *

_ a/n: Poor Al. ;.;_ _...though not really. More like: Wow, Al, you get the best torture scenes in the fic! You should be happy about this._

_last edit: 8/18/08_


	6. Chapter 6: Day Two: Twisted Intervention

The city was quiet now. There wasn't a single being stirring besides himself, and it was an interesting feeling. Walking through the scene would have been unsettling, if he hadn't caused it by his own will. Ed felt, in the back of his mind, that he was never one to have wanted power over others; he was the type to wonder why controlling his _own_destiny was taboo. He had learned though, over the years, that it was much easier to control his situation when there were minimal opportunities for others to interfere and impose their own desires.

Therefore, complete and utter silence.

Ed worked his way through the bodies fallen about the street, gracefully maneuvering his black-booted feet through what empty spaces he could find. There were so many details of his handiwork to inspect, as he walked through the chill wind. His favorite was the veterans, laid out in the front rows before the stage. He liked it, because when someone else walked these steps, they would never know why the men and women were called "wounded."

A slight smile graced his pale lips. They would be awake soon, and then the real mayhem would start.

As he ascended the white-stone front stairs of headquarters and pushed the massive front doors open, his grin widened. The inside hadn't hardly changed at all. But why would it, when the man who ran it was stuck in the past?

The expansive lobby admitted him with the warmth of numerous recollections, though there were bodies lying about the lobby. The nostalgia of being here hit him hard, regardless. After all, it was just him and his memories.

He crossed the intricate entrance hall, and quickly descended the stairs leading to the basement, his long ponytail chasing along behind him. He traced his fingertips down the stone wall as he made his way past the interrogation rooms, prison cells, and supply closets, collecting fragments of memories as he went. The fact that Al was down here didn't surprise him, but as he went further and further in, the dulled radiance of Al's presence was worrisome. When he was this close, it would typically reverberate within _his_Alphonse whatever feeling _this_Al was emitting; now, though, it was giving nothing, just a dull ache in its absence.

He didn't want to open that door, but he had to.

* * *

Hughes awoke abruptly in a halo of cold. The light was dim, and his fingers spread out on concrete; the legs of a metal table—

He scrambled up, but fell into the wall. It was oppressively quiet; all he heard was the harsh buzz of the sole light in the room, still on. He looked at it quickly, then around. To his right, Havoc's body spread out on the floor, lifeless and ashen in the sickly yellow light. And to the left . . . two piles of ropes, an empty chair, and nothing more.

Hughes took a moment to swear, then sucked in the energy that was draining out of him through his feet. He gritted his teeth and went to Havoc. He made no signs of movement; he was even fairly cold to the touch. No blood, but every soldier knew that death wasn't just red. He put a reverential hand on the man's shoulder, and then extracted the man's firearm.

The door. If he was lucky, Alphonse wouldn't be waiting out there to snipe him.

He fell into the riveted slab of steel to open it farther, ready to face what lay beyond it.

Two soldiers on the ground, and a dark, empty hallway begging for traps. Quietly, Hughes slung one of the soldier's rifles around his shoulder and moved on.

Silence. Everything silent. It was night; he could tell by the lack of light from anything other than the lamps. In the darkness, he remembered an alchemic reaction: he should probably have been dead along with everyone else. But as he continued on, a dark fear was crawling over him.

Everyone in Al's path would be a gonner, perhaps. That he could understand. What was scaring him was that maybe everyone _else,_ too, was disposed of. It was the only reason the hallways would be so utterly deserted. He ducked around a corner, and with practiced precision checked the next area. All around him, the same: emptiness, or fallen beings.

In the absence of human sound, the brain tricks itself into hearing familiar voices, sounds, and phrases, just to comfort itself. He could tell when his started, whispers in the wind of things that were supposed to be there. His wife, his friends—people calling his name. Each time, there was nothing, and as the moments ticked on, he wondered, what if he was the only one?

And what if, in the next second, what he was looking to avoid came out and took that away from him?

Which one was worse?

The foyer was no different. Nothing but blue uniforms spread across the wide, glossy floor, reflecting in the polished granite tiles. He saw the grand doors and started forward; he picked up another rifle off a fallen soldier as he ran. He burst through the doors into the night.

Lights. The floodlights of the building and those that illuminated the square, they stung his eyes and he had to raise his hand to shield himself from falling down the stairs. He already had his handgun raised, and as the shadow of a figure appeared in the yellow wash, he trained his site on it.

Down the steps and on the stage a man in blue stood with his back to him, staring out onto the lifeless city. In the stiff breeze, his coats blew, almost obscuring the man draped in his arms—

Ed turned his top half and beheld Hughes, his eyes narrow. There was something sickly about the way his hair was so light that it blended into his pale skin; the entirety of him glowed with the back light, and beyond that halo, starless black sky.

"You're not really going to shoot me with that, are you?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," Hughes said, referring to Alphonse as he raised his gun to aim it dead in the middle of Ed's back. "But put him down and keep your hands in the air. _Apart._"

Ed's mouth tightened, but he complied. He placed Al on his back, one hand over his abdomen and the other behind Al's head. "Are you really going to sacrifice your chance to see Elysia and Gracia again?"

"Don't taunt me," Hughes said. He concentrated his mind on his weapon, the monster he had to hit, rather than the humans who were needing him to use it. "We all have to die sometime, and it's better if it's now rather than later for you."

"How cruel." Ed knelt behind Al, his right hand rested on the man's stomach and his left cradling Al's head. Then he raised his hands, both of them in fists. "But you are a lucky man, Hughes. If my transmutation had reached you one second later, my dear Alphonse would have a bullet between his _eyes._" He opened his right hand, and a bullet fell from his palm. It was about halfway to the ground when his face curled into a hellish smile, and had just hit the stage when Hughes knew he had to shoot. As it bounced into the air and his finger pulled the trigger, the array etched into the bullet's metal flared and Ed was ducking to the ground.

Blue electricity dropped reached him an instant later. There was a slow moment of pain and then a blanked out memory; a few seconds of blackout, and more pain; and then Hughes found himself on his back, staring up at the obsidian sky.

A familiar pale, blue-clad figure appeared over him, his eyes narrowed. He straightened, and at arm's length, he brought a black pistol's barrel to aim between his captive's eyes.

"I'm so glad you came, Hughes. I have _so_many things I want to tell you."

* * *

Day 3: THE CHAINS OF PARADISE

_A.__Twisted Intervention_

Russell dreamed of a winery in the hills. A sun-drenched valley just outside a city, where the air was clean, the land was lush, and the days were always warm. He worked there with his father crossbreeding award-winning vines; they swirled flasks of fusca wine against the sunlight, discussing the quality of their work amidst the growing summer crop.Fletcher was there as well at times; he went to college in the city and came home on weekends in a black Ford that rumbled down the dirt road lined by their fields. Russell had already graduated with full honors, and was well on his way to being the most recognized bachelor in the county.

Now, his father was suddenly saying, the county fair was coming up, and people from all over were coming to enter and sample. What should they enter?

Russell's heart filled with pride: his father needed _his_opinion, judged his own thoughts perhaps even more important than his own!

He put on his grey cap and inspected the nearest cluster of fat, purple grapes with a smile. "Well," he began, "The 1917 from this field was a wonderful year, and it's just coming into full fruition. . . ."

Fletcher watched his brother hug his arms to his chest and murmur happy sounds in his sleep. He mumbled something and turned on his side: finally, Fletcher thought he was waking. Following that, Fletcher watched him expectantly for longer than he should have, and sighed. His brother, who complained of constant sleepless nights, would, given half a chance, sleep twenty-four hours straight. Fletcher rolled his eyes with a snort and jabbed his brother in the stomach with the heel of his boot, and _then_ went back to waiting.

Fletcher leaned back against the tower's interior railing and watched Russell wake. His brother looked around, and then up at him with sleepy blue eyes, though they were unconcerned. Fletcher smiled at him, and Russell smiled back.

"Did you have a nice dream?" the younger asked.

Russell thought for a second, and a dreamy look crossed his face. "Yes, I did. A dream of what I've always wanted. . . ." He looked back at his brother, brow creased. "Damn, I feel so_. . . happy. _Let's go buy some grapes._"_

Fletcher's mouth creased and he raised an eyebrow, staring into his thoughts, hard. "Yeah, I thought so. I knew the dream I had was no coincidence."

"Why, did you dream about dad?" Russell asked. As he got to his feet, his mind was trying to process everything it saw in terms of potential for growing grapes. It was hard to shake.

Fletcher said nothing at first, just surveyed the scene in a direction away from his brother's face. "I just wonder if a transmutation can really do that?" he asked quietly.

Russell stopped in his tracks, fuzzy brain taking its time to change gears. His face screwed up in thought, and then he started laughing, covering his face in his hands.

"What?" Fletcher asked, shocked.

"I was just thinking: That would be a really stupid thing to do with a transmutation that big. Expend that much energy, scare everybody half to death, just to give them good dreams? Good God! Who would do _that?_It's impossible though, what we saw was a _lot_more energy than just that would take."

"Actually," Fletcher said, folding his arms, "what if it was something more like a side effect? That the alchemist's desire for the realization of his goals was so deeply imbedded in the streams of energy that it took that form in the aftershock—a semi-cognizant path that the extra energy bled off into?"

"But that would mean . . . that someone had the mental ability to follow the transmutation as it went through _each and every person?"_ Russell shook his head. "And then he used the transmutees to ground-out the extra energy? That's not possible."

"_Maybe._It could have been unconscious too, but very deeply seeded." Fletcher gave his brother a helpless but telling look. "But you can't let a transmutation like that just run on autopilot. It would eventually collapse and run everything in it into _dust._ I think it's entirely possible to do it right, though. . . . You'd just have to be so entirely into it and trust in the idealization of your goal that you practically become one with it and its will."

Russell threw down his arms. "We're always on the other side of the argument about this. A properly-made transmutation should be self-sustaining, with just the human inputting the energy, and then making sure it stops, if necessary."

"For inanimate transformation, yes, that should be true, with little consequence. But then you are also getting into "perfect array" theory, which may or may not be possible from the get-go, and you_know_ that. The point is, though, that this is _human transmutation._ Manipulation of living objects, living molecules—structures, wills, souls! The only way this could have worked so well was if the alchemist had no fear of death! None! Perhaps even was willing to die and merge his or her consciousness with the will of the alchemy! What is the chance that this person is still alive?"

"But if they got sucked up, _we_would not be here, and not in so good of condition." Russell articulated carefully, trying to ignore the cold feeling that ebbing at him. "Are you thinking that maybe someone initiated this, gave themselves over to it, and then another person took the reigns to finish it? Otherwise it would have failed, like all human transmutation."

"Yes. Or someone else could have been the sacrifice to begin with. A _lot_ of someones."

Russell stared at his brother. Then, without a word, he dashed to the edge of the tower and let the thick stone railing stop him. What he saw nearly toppled him over the edge.

"Fletcher," he said, turning his head back a little, but not taking his eyes off of the scene below. "What is this?"

"Happiness." Fletcher pushed off his post and joined next to Russell. People in the streets jumping into each other's arms, others staring at limbs like they shouldn't be there, while still others cried on the sidewalks, or were in the midst of waking. All of it, though, was celebrating—weeping and crying of hope, joy, and thanks.

"I don't believe it," Russell breathed.

"It's nice," Fletcher agreed. "If you can believe it. Look at this, though. The price of reanimating so many people . . . Say their souls were in the Stone to begin with, and he returned them to the shells. . . . The cost of doing such a thing would _still_be too big to accomplish. He'd need a second Stone. That would be pointless, plus, there is _no_chemical catalyst in that Stone he made, we _know_that."

Russell gripped the railing, and barely dared to say it. "Unless there were never any souls in it to begin with, and he's not transmuting their souls now. I knew it. I _knew_it! Fletcher, do you know what this means?!"

He looked to his brother, who just stared at him and shook his head.

Russell's face broke into a wide smile, and he gestured wildly. "This means that my array is on the face of this tower as a message! He was trying to tell us what he's doing! He took the red water out of us and healed us!" He flung his arms around Fletcher and jumped up and down; he almost threw him into the wall in his excitement. "He did it, he did it, he did it!"

Russell laughed, let his brother down, and then ran across the floor to the stairs. "Come on Fletcher, let's celebrate!"

"Wait!" Fletcher cried, and the urgent pitch of it made Russell draw up short. When he looked back, Fletcher was oddly white and thoroughly upset.

"What . . . is it?"

"Russell. I don't know what red water you're talking about, but todayis the _Third_Day. There's still something he's going to do." He held up his right forearm and turned it out to his brother. In the palm was a rough transmutation circle, broken so that it wouldn't work, and down his arm were scrawled words dripped in red. Russell's mouth fell open. "'Meet me behind the National Church,'" he answered before Russell could ask.

* * *

The white ceiling of the hospital room, broken up only by the equally white ceiling fan hanging above his bed, was a strange thing to wake up to when one thought one was going to be dead.

Mustang's eyes fluttered open yet again, and this time he stared blankly up at the unmoving star-shape for a while.

It really wasn't going away, was it?

He sighed, a thin noise. It was no different from the last time, being useless and relegated to a place like this. Human history really did go in circles, didn't it?

Except on the bedside stand this time, there were no flowers. Just dust, and a broken clock.

Grumbling and rubbing his eyes, he sat up, and then slid his feet onto the wooden floor. It was cold, so he grabbed up the clothing strewn over a lonely chair in a bare corner. It was as he was mechanically doing up the buttons that he wandered in front of the room's sole window, and stopped.

There were people outside, people _walking around in the streets._

As he stared, his hand wandered to his side, skirted his side up and down. There was no of pain, no swollen flesh.

Mustang started for the door just as it opened toward him. Havoc appeared, hanging on the knob, breathless and worn. It took the major a second to realize there was someone standing there, and then he straightened like a pole. Havoc saluted, but it was a hurried thing he put no attention behind; he knew Mustang didn't need it.

"Sir, if you're awake, we need you," he said, almost as if he was trying to bore the point of his need into Roy with his eyes.

Unfortunately, when Mustang suddenly scowled at him, it wasn't Havoc he was thinking of. "He _did_it, didn't he?" he growled.

". . . Sir?" Havoc hazarded.

"You have a uniform for me, Major?" Mustang ignored him and indicated the extra clothes draped over Havoc's right arm.

"Oh, yeah, here—"

As he took the articles from Havoc, Mustang reoriented his thoughts. "Tell me everything on the way," he said. "I have an Elric to strangle."

* * *

Roy laid four photographs across his wide desk, fingers brushing over them in an arc. He gave them one disgusted glance and then left them for his personal collection of framed pictures, running his fingers against the edges of their silver frames. He paused for just a moment, and then let himself see them—faces of friends, of his beautiful wife, and of many who had Gone. There was one picture face-down, a framed newspaper photo that usually lived its lonely existence in his drawer, because it was difficult to face.

It was of two boys, taken during the days of their youth, when it was too hard to find them for even a moment and impossible to get a decent picture of them. Back when it was impossible to make them realize that life was worth remembering. But even though it was not taken by anyone he knew, it still had feeling, and captured them—Ed looking over his shoulder in his traditional red coat, and the upper half of Al's armored body behind him, looking back as well. Some news hound calling out to them, and in a moment stealing a glimpse of their lives.

The fuhrer stood the picture up with a quiet _clack_, and rose to his feet. He went over to the massive windows behind his seat and pulled the green curtains open.

_I am here to protect what we stood for. Not what you have become._

Below him, people spread out in the square, vast swatches of color painting the streets, pale heads stippling the living, sursurating sea. Flowers, of all shapes and sizes— singular; in wreaths, bouquets, and wraps—were piling up at the base of the stage, and in little mounds out in the square where the crosses had been.

It was a touching gesture, but watching it hurt deeper than he'd expected. Roy was hit rather often by the question of if this view of the city was the view Ed and the others had seen during their last days. From up here, things took on a different cast, a city stretched out with hope and prosperity. He wondered: if he had been one of those lost, would he be appeased by these people's gesture? If he were a spirit looking down from the proverbial above, would the city, trying to be such a happy thing now, stop making him hurt? Knowing they were saying "thank you for your sacrifices"—even as just a soldier, not a martyr—made him want to cry. Could angels cry?

On some level, Roy had to believe in some kind of heaven, reincarnation, or afterlife, to keep himself sane. But at the same time, he was the type of man that rued setting foot in churches because his lack of belief in them and what they did to people. Some needed religion, they did, but the fact now that people were outside praying, _to Ed's vision,_ wrecked any kind of good feeling he could have had here. Ed may have performed miracles—and ironically given many a lot more faith—but brainwashing the masses was exceedingly low.

He huffed. It was a wonderful deception, Edward, to take everyone off-guard. He had to admit it. But the little clues—leaving Alphonse on the stage in an elaborate, blood-made transmutation circle; disappearing his wife and Hughes; and drawing the array on the tower, visible from his window until they'd scrubbed it and the array on the stage off this morning—were definitely enough to tell them exactly what he wanted them to hear:

_I'm coming to get you._

He frowned and went back to his desk. He stared at the old photograph of Ed and Al, and then laid it, face-up, next to the crime-scene photographs. His enemy had a face, a name, and that was the best he was going to get.

They didn't have much time: until tonight at the most. There had been a transmutation during the scheduled time for each of his speeches so far, and that was not going to change. Edward was a creature of habit, of predictable, orchestrated deceptions when he got going. And it seemed that this was something he wanted to draw out.

_What are you doing and how am I going to stop it..._

Where would he show up? According to Havoc, he hadn't yesterday. If they couldn't find him, there was nothing they could do to stop him. Roy's only hope was that Ed was showy and confrontational. If there was someone he wanted to destroy, he'd take their world out from under them, and then stand before them at the end, while they watched the rest of it come crumbling down by his hands.

He would bet that Ed was going to find them, his old military associates, before he was finished. It was a harsh reality, but Roy couldn't deny it: At the very least, he was going to show up for just him, hold his power over Roy at the moment he took Roy's life away from him. It was a motif Ed would work with. On the other end, Roy could also easily see the delusional man destroying the entire city. He certainly seemed to be leaning that way.

But_why_.

That, above all else, was why Roy knew he'd come back: Ed would make sure everyone understood his vengeance. He wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut. Never had.

The only question was if he would talk long enough for them to take him down.

_The sound of a snap, and cloud of red engulfing everything. Ed staggering backward, flesh blackening and burning off his body. He collapsed as a charred husk on the ground, bone, blood, and other things falling off what used to be a cherished human being. And in the background, Al was crying, sobbing with grief._

_Just think of it like a monster. 'The Enemy, a horrible monster going to rape your women, murder your children, and take away your friends and your only chance at livelihood.'_

Roy sighed and enclosed his face in his hands. Yeah, that was enough to get him going, if he could convince himself to be so gullible again.

"Children," though . . .—the children at Ed's feet on the cross. . . . Irony was Ed's style. He was going to be somewhere where a _lot_of people could see him. Somewhere that meant something to them, as he destroyed them for not saving him.

Roy's hands parted, only to frame around his head. He was going to come here. Back to the pavilion, where everyone would be and where he, Mustang, was going to be waiting in the palm of his hand.

How many times had Ed invaded military buildings and gotten back out? This time it was headquarters, but that meant little to a man who could destroy city blocks with his fingers. The evacuation order had been successful in the days before, but now the nine-hundred thousand people still around—and who still thought it was two days ago—_wouldn't_leave. They refused to, and with only about five thousand soldiers still kicking around not combing the city for Edward, he couldn't _make_them. Not that he should be worried about his career when they were all going to die, but honestly, riots, he did not need.

The Third Day's ceremonial speech was to be held at the park just outside where the new monument was going to be unveiled; just in case, he should station Armstrong there. It didn't matter if he stuck additional bodies there: if Ed could see them, he could kill them, before they ever knew he was there. Himself included, if he waited like a duck. Yes, Armstrong and a few combat alchemists were his best bet.

It was as good as a plan as a plan he was going to get, except. . . . There was something else nagging at him.

Roy dropped his hands and spread the four photographs out in an arc in front of him, and fixed on the most recent one. Alphonse lay in a transmutation circle on the stage, unconscious, his bound hands hidden behind his back and his uncovered skin dark and swollen. The enormous circle underneath him was elaborate but purposefully rough, drawn in dripped red, though it just came up as "dark" in the black-and-white. On his hand was a thin, dark array, and the photo underneath was a close-up of it.

The thought that Ed would leave Al at their mercy, obviously able to see what he had been though, raised his hackles. Al would never be Ed's art piece. He would never use him as a message.

Unless Al had convinced him to.

Roy ran his hands over his mouth, tracing the stubble dotting his skin. He couldn't discount that his eyes told him Ed was the one doing things, but as an alchemist, and a military man, he knew he couldn't trust the apparent by itself.

They couldn't interrogate Al further, so they couldn't go that road, but it didn't mean he might not still pull something somehow. Roy could already see the disaster that would be. He was sure the array on his hand was what was keeping him unconscious, but while there_were_ways to remove it, no one could tell if that would kill Al for some unseen reason.

In any event, there were only two answers: Ed either woke up on his own, or Al had his hand in it. The subsequent motives were various, but hard-edged: They could be working together; they could not. Al could be following after Ed to stop his rampage, and not letting anyone in on it because it was the only way to spirit him away afterwards (though he was seriously delusional if they thought they wouldn't follow him). Something could have happened to Al and set Ed off; adversely, Ed could have died and Alphonse screwed himself up making himself a fake Ed. . . . No matter what, it all came back to some need for revenge.

Roy sighed. It would be nice to know just what the hell happened to them, but he may never have the luxury of knowing. All the scenarios he could make did not deflect the fact that they had an imminent problem, and they all ended with the same need to _stop_Edward. Ed wouldn't leave Al in their hands if he were relying on him to do something; it would be too unpredictable. Al was in their hands, so yes, they needed to watch him, but there were more necessary things. It wasn't like Al was _waiting_in a cell. He was _unconscious_.

Ed was going to come back for Al, and probably before the transmutation he was going to do if he was going to, because that little circle on Al's hand would definitely _not_ exempt him from something like that. But depending on who was pulling the strings, it might be in a completely different way. They simply didn't have the manpower to cover both angles.

Al's presence was hiding something, it was. And from what Havoc had said about the interrogation. . . . Had he simply grown up and become recalcitrant—which he certainly had reason for—or was one or both of them no longer human. . . ?

Roy frowned and strode across his desk to the floor-to-ceiling pane window behind it, and pushed the window open. Riding along the cool breeze, the sounds of a collected mass of people spread out in the square filtered in. It was not an unpleasant noise.

People praying. _Worshiping_. Creating a shrine to thank Edward. They said he'd cured them of all the things they'd ailed from since the revolt. He gave them back their missing _limbs._ All at the place where the crosses were. He was _not_just crazy. This was something else. He was using this holiday against him. This was punishment, for him. What he couldn't do.

"'The curtain of the red devil closes tonight, Roy Mustang. While the dead will rise, will you come see what you've made possible?'"

Roy chuckled darkly as he rubbed his gloved thumb and fingers together. _That_was what was written on the inner ring of the array Al was laying on top of. And on the outside of the circle, thick and encompassing the entire thing, was the ouroboros. He was not just here to save them.

Hughes and his wife were probably already dead, sacrifices for the previous transmutations. It didn't take much to guess who the third would be.

Roy shut his eyes and waited for a shiver to pass. He hadn't had to go home without anyone there, yet. It was the only thing keeping him stable, though watching her scream from a captor's grip. . . .

He stared one last time out the wide window. Why was it, that every time he looked out onto these people, he had the feeling they were already dead?

"What am I supposed to _do,_Riza?" he asked quietly. "I've already lost everything I care about."

_You can still ask him why, if you find him._

Her voice echoed in his mind. It was strangely . . . comforting.

_And then you can burn him to splinters._

Roy sank against his desk. He traced his finger along the glossy surface, until he came to the vase of the lilies, the little red tag waiting at the bottom.

There were other people waiting for him, weren't there. Waiting to live their lives, with or without him. As the leader, he had to protect that for them, and if he couldn't, he better step down, and say goodbye to any power he'd ever hope to have. He had to save their livelihoods, no matter who was trying to get in the way of that.

Roy sighed, pulling himself up by placing his palms flat on his desk. He looked at the picture of two boys one last time, and then laid it flat.

Two days ago, he had been at this very desk, bemoaning what he didn't have, so unaware of everything he _did_have. Now, he had little: just memories and pictures, and a people he couldn't hope to save.

It was like Ishbal, all over again.

Would he, and everything he'd ever cherished, soon be unknown to anyone? His entire life, his civilization . . . gone in an instant. . . . He wondered briefly about who else in the world there was, outside of amestris, that he would have met and left a favorable impression on: was there anyone out there that was remembering him, even now? Someone who would pass on the great things he had tried to do. . . ?

Would the records of his life too soon be nothing more than what had been captured in a pile of photographs along his life someone might someday find and look upon, never truly able to understand who he'd been, what he'd stood for?

_No._ There was still time. In so many years, he had never so clearly seen what he had wanted for himself, for the people. He was not going to let it end like this.

He grabbed his trench coat off of the hook and headed for the door, for his generals. He had his answer for them.

Long ago, he had decided that if he were to die of something other than natural causes, it was going to be by his own hand. Not even Edward Elric was going to take that away from him.

Just as he opened the wide wooden door, Havoc appeared on the other side of it, pushing it in at the same time as he pulled it open.

"Sir, we have a problem in the lobby," he said.

* * *

He woke to a view of a blue sky adorned with lazily drifting white clouds. He watched them with glassy eyes, until his brother's head appeared above him as well, looking down, curious. Ed smiled, a bleary and sated gesture. "You came back again," he said.

"I did." Al smiled, amused.

Ed reached out with an uncoordinated hand and touched Alphonse's pant leg, gently fingering the blue material, rubbing it back and forth between his fingers just for contact. "You carried me all the way back. . . ."

"Yep." Al pulled his leg away, but only to sit down next to Ed, legs crossed. "Our contingency plan is going to meet me at noon."

"Really? Aren't you nice. . . ." His voice was slow and soft, drowned in the muzziness from sleep. "Oh. Wait—?" Ed rolled his head on the grass, looking over the sky. "Isn't it noon already?"

Al looked off in the same direction, considering the brightened hill full of tombstones to the west, what the sunset would look like that night: What colorful variation of blood-red loneliness the sunset would bring to the grassy knoll. After a time, he shrugged, slowly.

"They can wait," he whispered.

"Hmm." Edward flopped his head toward Al's shiny black boot, so at least one of his eyes would be in shade as he stared at the ground. "You didn't bring him back?"

Al put his cheek in his palm and idly plucked at Ed's rumpled jacket. He shook his head. "No. I get to close to him, and I experience his emotions, his memories, his feelings, acutely. It's like a poison."

"Even unconscious?" Ed asked.

"He was dreaming."

Ed sighed, dreamily. "Ah. Well, it won't be a problem. I'll just go back and get him."

"Yes," Al said shortly. "I've got that covered as well."

"I see." Ed smiled and fidgeted a little; he closed his eyes and made a pleasant warble, feeling the sun on his face. Then, inhaling deeply, he pulled his arms up and held them in front of the blue backdrop, stretched out above his head. He stared at them, two peach hands mirroring each other against the vibrant sky. As he was testing out his different fingers, he asked, "Do you ever contemplate existence?"

Al drew his legs away from Ed's warmth and hugged them to his body. He didn't look away, but rested his chin on his knees, staring out at the rows of innumerable grey military graves, identical, rolling over the hills into the distance. "Of course I do. 'What is going to be left of me when I die? Who is going to remember me, what I stood for, and what I wanted in this life?' I don't need to have made a difference, but . . . I don't want to die before I'm ready. There's no going back from it, you know. And while this life isn't perfect, it's better than none at all. . . ."

"Oh." Ed glanced away; that was certainly not the answer he expected. Whatever Al said was usually supposed to be an extension of his own thoughts. Odd.

When Alphonse said nothing more, he reached out and put his hand on Al's knee; he rubbed the calf gently, up and down. "Al," he said softly, "no one is going to forget who we are. Not after what we're going to do."

Al made a small, noncommital noise, accompanied by a morose frown. He went back to plucking at Ed's thick uniform, and Ed, after a moment, sighed and let his hands fall into the grass, just starting to get green.

Ed stared at his hand through the blades, thinking. Al had never said anything like it before, and he wasn't quite sure what to do. They were the same, before they came to this city; Al was always more limited in experience than he. But now . . . Whatever was bothering Al, he wasn't sure he was even capable of caring. He could listen, and it could get into his head, but as far as being empathetic, it was like it would bounce out of his thoughts, never to return. He had things he was going to do—was driven to do—and he would do it, no exceptions. And Al was part of him, so Al would do it, too. Wouldn't he? ...How could he _not?_

The gentle plucking at his arm stopped, to be replaced by a static pressure around his arm. "Hm? Al?" He turned his head to see Al's large hand holding his forearm. Following his arm up, he found Al himself to have his head tipped back; he was looking up at the huge tree over them; fair, pale face turned up as though he'd never seen the world before, and as though he were having some sort of great epiphany. A breeze blew by, warmer than the last few. Ed watched him close his eyes, and waited until Al opened them again before he gently asked: "What is it? What are you feeling?"

Al took a deep breath, and his hand tightened on Ed's arm. "Spring."

Ed looked at the branches of the tree spread out above them, all its branches fuzzed with green.

"Can you smell it?" Al continued. "The smell of spring? The scent of the air's changed." His eyes darted over the buds, the dark branches, the blue sky and fleeting clouds behind. He let the green dots filter in to his eyes without blinking; with that and the bright sunlight, the sweetish scent of _life_onthe crisp breeze that gently stung his exposed skin, he let himself be taken in. He sighed.

Ed looked around, to a few flowering trees nearby. He pursed his lips, trying to think of something to say. "With all the alchemic energy I've put into the ground, it must have invigorated the plants—started spring early."

Al made a contented noise of agreement, deep within his taught throat. He leaned into the nipping breeze, and the warming sun. He opened his dazzled eyes, again searching out the spidering boughs leaning overhead. "I'm glad."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

Al smiled, a soft and sad thing, something Ed had never seen on him. Al explained: "That I am allowed to witness one more springtime in my life, I will always be grateful."

"I'm glad it's going to come a little early for the people in the city this year?" Ed offered as well, at a loss. "They need it."

Al looked down at him, pitying, for his incomprehension. He looked like he wanted to say something, framed against the view of the dark tree and blue sky, but he bit back the words. He rose to his feet, and, dusting off his pants, said, "If we're already late, we shouldn't make destiny wait."

"Whaddo you say," Ed asked to cheer him up, suddenly sitting up and running his hand in a wide arc over the view of the city; "should we give them a run for their money? They're the ones that are making you hurt like this. Let's give them what they _deserve._"

"Oh_hell_yes." A wicked smile spread across Al's face, and when he looked up at Ed, there was a glint was in his copper eyes. "I've been waiting for you to say that for a _long_time."

"Good, good." He gave Al a wicked smile, and then ran his hand through his hair. "You going to talk to the Tringhams, or should I?"

Al shrugged. "I'll do it. You said you didn't want them to see you?"

"I'm not who they want to see, anyway." It was Ed's turn to shrug. But as he popped his neck he got to his feet. "You know what to do with this?" he asked, grasping Al's wrist and turning it up. With his other hand he produced the dark red, faceted stone from his pants pocket, and dropped it into Al's palm, warm and glowing.

It made him feel full, powerful, _complete_. But Al stiffened: he hated this thing, because it was a symbol of what Ed was going to do, and how he wasn't given a choice to follow along. He'd known it for a long time, but until they came to this city, he actually hadn't been able to care. And now that he could . . . it was bringing him nothing but trouble. God damned emotions, they were a damn death-trap cycle: You get annoyed that you have emotions, and then you get annoyed that you can _get_ annoyed. . . . It was so much simpler when he only had one way he could think: Ed's way.

Slowly, he curled his fingers around the stone and pulled back from Ed's hand. He forced a shadowed smile to cross his face. "Of course I do," he purred.

Ed smiled back, a bit terse from the withdrawal from the stone, but shaking it off. Anything, for his brother. He could trust him with it. Ed clapped Al on the shoulder. "We'll get you back to normal, Alphonse. Don't you worry about it."

Al's smile turned into an unamused frown. He pushed Ed's hand off, but Ed caught him again.

"What's wrong, Al?"

Al cocked his jaw to the side, and stared at him hard. At his side, his hand closed around the stone. "You know, if this doesn't work, I'll never forgive you."

Ed smiled, cocky and dangerous, and took the man's hand. "Then you don't need to worry." He gave it a squeeze. "You know you never had to."

Al glared dubiously. Then, he turned his head to the little grey grave markers dotting the hillside.

"This will probably be the last time we meet like this."

Ed nodded. "Next time, it will be better," he said gently. "We will be whole." He followed Al's line of sight, and beyond it, to a headstone with cultivated flowers growing around it. "You know, graves are not markers that we no longer exist, Alphonse," he said softly. "They are markers that there were people that loved us."

Al's mouth twisted down. "Maybe so," he said to placate him. After a while of staring at the silent lines of graves, he realized Ed was still looking at him, his head tipped to the side. Suddenly, Al turned back to Ed, and cracked a hellish smile for him.

"Well," he said, "Can we start the mayhem yet?"

Ed's return smile was even darker, and he chuckled like a growl in the back of his throat. "I thought you'd _never_ask."

Al flashed his teeth for him and started backing away. "I'll see you soon, then," he said.

Ed made a like gesture and turned off down the hill, beyond the old tree. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he called over his shoulder as he waved.

Al smiled wickedly and bowed low. "What could I do today, Brother," he said, like his mouth was dripping sweet poison, "that could make you unhappy? It's the day you get to _die._"

Ed preened. With a malicious grin, he gave Al a salute, and disappeared behind the hill.

Alphonse's smile dropped the moment Ed was gone. His eyes flicked over to the side, the closest dark mausoleum.

It sure was easy to fool him recently.

He pushed open the metal doors, and stood before a sunken room with two figures lying on two ceremonial cement caskets, one to either side of his shadow. The transmutation circles on the hands of the two figures asleep held fast, still doing there job. As he descended into the cold stone box, Al brought the stone in front of his body. Underneath his one hand, it started to drip red, and left rivulets of blood along the floor. He let it pool into his free hand as the flow widened, coating his hand in deep crimson, and then he raised his hand to the wall.

Ed folded his arms behind his head as he marched toward the grey city in the distance. "Are you ready for my finale, Mustang?" he asked into the air with a bright smile. The feel of the soft skin of his arm was marvelous. "You haven't seen _anything_yet."

Arms covered in red, Al shut the door of the tomb behind him. The stone, dried at his command, he curled his cold fingers around. His knuckles, pink and white from the March wind, were as a human a thing as he would ever see. And yet...

"You never once saw _me_when you looked at me, did you?" Silently, he looked to the sentinel graves on the rise of the hill above him.

There were living things, trees and grass, here, but everything that held a trace of human life on the surface had never lived. Just stone, unintelligible, unwanted, enigmatic stone.

He replaced the gem to his pocket and headed for the grey city stretched out below, dusting off his hands as he went.When they were clean, he folded his hands behind his head and glared into horizon.

"There is nothing I can do today that will get in your way, brother, except, of course, what I'm going to do."

* * *

Fletcher, his hair now black and long, ran in the open doors of headquarters, screaming in terror. "The Fuhrer! The Fuhrer! Get me the Fuhrer, I've found his wife! I know where the Fuhrer's wife is!"

He ran full-body into about three soldiers that turned at his words, and beat his fists into the hapless one closest to him. "Wait a minute, kid! What did you say? What—"

Fletcher pounded his teenage fists hard into his chest. "I _told_you, I found his wife! My brother and I, we were out at the national cemetery, and there she was! You have to save her, she was bleeding all over and—and—what are you _standing_there for, you've got to go _help_her, the emergency services aren't working—!"

His shrieking was met with scurrying feet, and then Fletcher was yanked off the man by his shirt collar. "_What_ are you talking about, kid?" demanded the most stern-looking general Fletcher had ever seen, and the man's eyes were drilling into his own. "You better not be lying! I'll have you executed right here and now if you are, pulling stunts on the Military at times like this! How did you even get here, anyway?"

Fletcher opened his mouth, then, looking out the front door he had so unceremoniously burst through. His mouth hung in the air for a moment, and then he shook his head and screamed again, "It doesn't matter how I got here! What _matters_ is that I found the lady Fuhrer! Do you want her to freaking die out there?! I'm not strong enough to carry her, so I couldn't help her, but do you want the Fuhrer to burn everyone here to rubble because _you_let his _wife_die in the freakin' _cemetery?_"

Faced with that prospect and Fletcher's hysterical screaming and gesticulating, he immediately took the boy in an unbreakable hold and barked orders. "You! Go get the Fuhrer! Danielson, mobilize A company get them out to the cemetery now! The rest of you, find your formations and wait for the Fuhrer's orders! Kid!" He jerked fletcher tightly, nearly choking him in the process of making him look up. "Was there anyone else there, in the cemetery?"

Fletcher shook his head, trying to look like he was thinking. "Just my brother . . ."

The man stiffened suddenly, as his mouth ticked downward. "And who _is_ your brother?"

For the second time, Fletcher's mouth fell open—this general had already heard the name Tringham once before, and . . . "Uh . . . Bobby?"

The general narrowed his crow-like slits of eyes, and just as he was about to do something more definitive toward's Fletcher's detainment, the boy flung himself off of him and yelled as fast as he could, "Oh yeah! And there was this tall blond military guy that I was tying to flag down for help, but he was too busy making some huge transmutation circle, talking about raising the dead, and he was kinda scary, so I just tried to stay away from him; we told the first police we saw 'bout _him,_an' they told us to come to you. . . ."

"Raising the dead?" The general stared at him. "But that's impossible." Suddenly, he grabbed the boy's shoulders. "Are you _lying_ to me!"

"No!" he screeched, shaking his head. "Don't you even wanna know where she _is_in the—"

"What is this about making humans from the dead!"

They both stopped. The soldiers scattered. Fletcher's heart skipped a beat when he saw the look on his fuhrer's face, and he swallowed hard.


	7. Chapter 7 Day Three: Culmination

Hughes watched the barrel of the gun and the man holding it with ever-increasing clarity, but found, despite his overwhelming dire desire to run, that he couldn't move.

"Yes. This is in fact _your_ gun," Ed informed him, narrowing his eyes. "Don't think that you'll be getting any others."

And then, Ed withdrew the weapon and cast it aside, it sliding to the far end of the stage. Hughes stared, and then did exactly the opposite of instructed while Ed was turned: he frantically checked left and right, only to find that gun metals scattered around had been melted to the ground.

Maes recoiled, but there was something amiss in the action. He stopped, and didn't dare look down—his legs weren't moving.

"What did you _do?"_ he asked immediately.

Ed looked sharply down his aquiline nose at the man lying on the steps. He turned to Hughes and put his hands on his hips, each second he occupied heavy with deadly threat. "I put half of you to 'sleep,'" he explained with a wave of the hand. "It is only by my grace that anyone is awake, and this time, I decided it to only be you who would be witness to this." He tossed his head and shrugged. "I woke you up to talk to you, and I simply revoked it. Well, half of it."

Ed plunked himself down on the edge of the stage. A few feet away, Hughes sat at about the height of his knee. The blond put his right elbow on his calf and rested his chin in his hand. He clicked his heels absently against the wood of the stage and stared at Hughes. The man stared back, but he wavered. The floodlights from the edge of the building illuminated only as far as the stage and made Ed's face glow a ghastly white, with nothing but darkness behind it. So many times Hughes had walked these same steps home at night, alone and with men and women who had bright futures, but he had always felt safety emanate from within the bright ring of light. Never had he felt fear here. Never. And now it came in the form of Ed's face.

Ed diverted his attention by holding up the fired bullet between two fingers in his left hand. "You've changed a lot, Hughes," he said. "It's Elysia, isn't it? And Gracia being gone too?" He looked at the metal in his hand and started flipping it over his fingers as he talked. "Because your humanity has been robbed from you over these years, watching your loved ones slowly wither from both mental and physical sicknesses you can only hope for a cure for; watching your every hope, dream, and proof of existence become lost in a storm of your many fears. . . ?" He held his hands out helplessly and sighed. "What can you do, right?"

As he made eye contact with Hughes again there was a crackle, a tiny blue spark of alchemy at Ed's feet that soon enlarged and wound up his body. Hughes followed the light up, until the energy dissolved at the top of Ed's blond head. In its wake was a younger man, a boy Hughes knew in clothes from the past, leaning back, smiling, with fleeting sparks of blue twisted off his fingers. The thing that was the same, though, was the wide, frightening smile.

Maes growled. "You are a _demon."_

Ed shook his head. "I am your past, your present, and your future. The world hangs in my hands, and all I hear from you is that you want to be destroyed." He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a dark red stone; he held his hand out and it floated above his palm. It followed his hand, sucking up light, even as he gestured. "There are times, I admit, when certain among humanity are hurt so deeply as to completely lose track of who they are, and the despair—the_ confusion—_that comes from not knowing which way is up and being unable to piece together a view of the future can take you so far backwards that you can never get out on your own. Not even _want _to. But that fluctuation, that ability to even feel at all, is what makes a human being; what makes life valuable. It's not what we_ do,_but that we can _experience _for ourselves. The beauty of life comes not from where we can end up but where we can _go._It is the depth of the human _spirit_ that wants us to push forward." Quietly, he looked back down at Maes, head tipping back. "Beating up Al is not the way to do that."

Maes shook his head in disbelief. "What do you think we were doing, Ed, with all of this?" He lifted his hand slightly, indicating the streets around them. "You _heard_Roy's speech, I know you did—"

"He doesn't believe in it himself," Ed said simply, shrugging. He looked over his shoulder at the city. "And neither do they. If you just tell them to forget, that makes it only a terrible incident, the grief from which they can't express." He tipped his head back and looked at sky, idly kicking his heels against the back of the stage. "Roy has done a really terrible job of telling people what they have to be proud of, why they should want go on. He's done a_ great_ job of holding their hands as they sink to the bottom."

He looked down in his lap, strangely soft-eyed. "But I can't blame him for it; he couldn't see it the way Al and I did. He lost the things that were valuable to him, but unlike most of us, he gained a lot, too. . . . But even his prize lost its way: Riza was falling, too."

Ed tipped his head the other way, then shrugged. He got to his feet and made his way over to Alphonse. As he did so, he almost latently changed back into his original, taller form, in the same way he had changed out of it. When he got to his sibling's side, he stopped, and turned his head curiously down to him. "Huh." He jabbed Al's side with his foot, hard.

He smiled, and after bringing his hands together he grasped the mic stand behind him, melted into the stage the day before. His hand crackled blue; the energy raced down the black pole and skirted into Alphonse. It circled around his arms and up his neck, attacking his right hand and the back of his neck. The lightening melted into his skin, leaving the glowing shape of an array embedded there. Just as the air grew a little cooler, the transmutation finished, and Ed lifted Al's hand to check his work.

"What did you do?" Hughes asked, horrified.

Ed dropped Al's arm, stood back up, cocked his hip, and leaned against the mic stand with a hard smile. "Tried to kill me the other day when I came by to see him. That array will keep him from waking up, even if I reanimate everyone else." He put the sole of his boot over Alphonse's side and rocked his body a little, never taking his eyes of Maes. He shrugged, but with a wicked, toothy smile. "It'll teach him."

He was quiet for a second, just watching the emotions flitting across Hughes's face, and then he raised an eyebrow, amused. "I'm going to do the same to you, you know. But first, I have a proposition for you."

He turned out to the city. He held his arms straight out, fingers splayed. In between the end of his blue uniform sleeve and his glove was the sharp conspicuousness of automail. He laughed. "Now what do you say, Mr. Chief Commander Under-the-Circumstances? Since you were feeling so powerless, I'll let you feel what it's like to have the world in your hands: Do you want your people to wake back up and take their chances with life, or will you condemn them, by deciding death is better for them?"

Curses died on Hughes's lips as he caught Ed's look. He was smiling, a genuine smile, musing but light-hearted. Ed leaned his head against his shoulder, eyes soft and inviting.

"What are you going to do, Hughes? You're all alone. Everything you've feared as you've watched Elysia and Gracia's health fail over these six years has come to pass. Mustang saw what happened six years ago as a tragedy that was our greatest failure. I always thought that this could be our moment of greatest triumph, and who is still around?" He held out his open hand. "I want you to chose. Are you going to stop progress now, when it offers itself to you again?"

Maes's mouth fell open. He stared at Ed, deciphering his game. This had to be a trick. He'd do whatever he wanted no matter what Hughes said: If Hughes didn't play and said leave them be, Ed'd kill them and he'd feel bad about it in the split second he had left to live. If he said save them, and then they all lost everything anyway . . . he'd feel guilty not being able to stop it. But honestly . . . he was powerless.

He tried to be a good man. He worked for the betterment of people, all his life! How could things end like this? Not just an unfair death in war, but . . . the murderer staring him in the face, someone who should have been his adopted son.

No. If he were the last man alive that could do good, he had to make the right decision, no matter what he knew would happen.

"No matter what power I have," Hughes said, readying himself for the fireworks, "I don't have the right to take away anyone's choice to live or die. _And neither do you."_

Ed's tight expression split into a dark smile. His narrowed eyes stayed cold, tiny slits. "Remember that next time you talk to Al."

Maes shook his head. "Al forfeited that right when he decided to take it from others, and _so _have you!"

"Can't you believe the truth, Hughes?" he asked, turning to the dark city. "I know you aren't such a terrible person."

Maes glared at Ed's back, before he realized he could be searching for a weapon. "You think you're trying to teach me a _lesson?"_

Over his shoulder, Ed shook his head. "No," he whispered. "I'm here to give you what you need, so that you remember who you are." He held out his hands. "I want you to see this."

He stripped out of one arm of his jacket, and undid the buttons of the white undershirt as well, one by agonizing one. As Hughes watched, unsure, Ed then pulled his metal arm free of the white sleeve as well.

He produced the red stone and held it in one hand. Steadying his legs, he pressed his palms together, slowly, the stone between them. The metal of his fingers gleamed in the night's floodlights. He was covered in an iridescent blue, and then stretched out his right arm.

A wave of freezing cold blew from his body with enough force to knock Hughes back; the night, already dark, turned black with clouds obscuring the stars. The lights from the street lamps disappeared as well, until they were in a cocoon of dark with just the stone to illuminate a small sphere. Only Ed remained in the blue alchemic light, holding out his metal arm. As Hughes was staring at it, it shattered.

Ed rocked backwards but held his ground, and gritted his teeth; the pieces of the automail port were under attack as well; they broke off his body and were swept away in the howling wind. Then, as he held his side with his remaining arm, tendrils of the stone poured into the wound. Fibers wound out and around, encasing where his shoulder should have been and extending from his body. Farther, and then layer upon twisting layer, until what Hughes saw became a beautiful, fully-shaped arm.

Ed looked over at Hughes, a piercing warning of yellow eyes and bluish-purple light reflecting where his pupils should have been. Ed did no more than that though, instead closing his eyes to concentrate on the rest of the transmutation. Hughes knew it was suicide to stop it, but he wanted to. It was an odd, sick cluster of feelings wracking him: this was what Ed—little Ed—had always wanted, and here he was, forming it for himself. In front of his very own eyes. But the cost of it was making him sick.

Ed's leg broke away suddenly, shards flying indiscriminately outward, caught up in the gale. The blond man did not fall though; he stayed up as the blood red, then successively peachier fibers wound their way around his body, as though the battering wind held him up. The creamy colors tipped off Ed's fingers and toes and then dissipated; when Hughes looked, the light was fading, and underneath Ed's ripped blue pantleg was a bare, flesh foot. As normal as any other. The air was silent again, and the lights winked back into existence.

While he was gaping, Ed started towards him, though the movements were wobbly. He stopped a few feet away, and held out the red stone in his hand. He dropped it to the stage with a hard, cold _thunk,_ and then kicked it away, near Alphonse. "See? Human transmutation isn't all bad."

Ed turned his newly-free hand toward Hughes. "Good night, Hughes. It's time for you to join Riza among the saved."

He put his hands together. Maes pushed away from him. "No! No, don't—!"

Ed pressed one finger into the stage, and in a flare of white light Hughes went still. Ed wobbled on his feet, but stayed where he was for his next move. The loneliness was frightening, and made him shiver. But more than that, it was hard to breathe; he ached, and strained blue veins were rising in his arms. He grabbed his stomach and a small mouthful of blood heaved from his stomach.

Without waiting for the pain to pass, he smeared the blood across the wood and spread his weight onto his knees. His vision darkened suddenly; he could barely make out his hands as he pressed one into the other. The resonating jolt of energy nearly toppled him over, but it did not take much to fall into the ground and get his hands there. It was going to hurt to do this, but that was what he wanted all along, anyway, wasn't it?

The city spread out beyond him in the dark, and he knew, this time, that he could save them. _I give to you the power, my people, to break free from your nightmares.__ Wake up and _see,_what our future could have been. What it's going to be, again._

His gold eyes glowed, hungry, in the transmutation's brilliant light. _It's time to wake up, Mustang. Come see what we have grown._

* * *

_3B. __A KIND OF CULMINATION_

* * *

In a cold, dark cell, Alphonse Elric's heartbeat slowly began to rise. He was laid out on his back on a wooden bench, his feet touching the floor on either side, with his wrists tightly fastened to his hips by a specialized, leather, belt-like apparatus.

The black circle on top of his left hand—just under the surface of the skin—was gradually fading. Made of excess carbons in his body fused together, the pattern was slowly being absorbed back into his system. In a few more hours, enough of it would be metabolized to fade at least one of the lines until it broke, rendering the array completely useless.

Until then, though, Al closed his eyes and resigned himself to being bored.

* * *

The ouroboros was a symbol of infinity, of death and rebirth all forming into one. The wings on the outside, not part of the normal design, would indicate pieces outside of that circle—that norm—one would think. Possibly a reference to angels or devils. Devils of red.

Or perhaps, they were wings that would allow one to soar beyond that circle altogether.

Havoc crossed his arms and frowned, turning his attention again from the window to the interior of the black military car. Roy had order an entire half of the army out to follow the boy's lead, and so here they were, going to the cemetery. While it made sense from a strategic point of view not to send the Fuhrer, and who the target had a beef with, it didn't seem to make much sense to leave him behind if this was their chance to find their target, their target which most likely only a handful, including the flame alchemist, could take down.

The black military car whirled along, and as he sat, legs crossed, arms folded, stare grim, the two things he could think of were that either Roy couldn't bare to see Riza dead, or he didn't actually think she was gone just yet. But wouldn't that make him want to come, to make sure her life was saved, or to protect her corpse while he still could?

No, make Jean do it. Make him take care of their body bags.

But, if the man was right . . . then this was all just filling time. If they did not stop Ed, at the end of the night he would transmute them. And if he did not, they would still be expired, those who had been unconscious before falling fatally victim to the product of a retroactive alchemy Ed had encoded into them with either the first or second transmutation. If that happened, Havoc would be left, with very few others, to be the military. Damn, he did not want that. Did not want that at all.

The thought that only those who had been in Central six years ago had fallen comatose still didn't sit well with him; Mustang's theory was that it was only the people in Central during the rebellion were affected. . . . Yet it would be impossible to do so discriminating a thing with a transmutation like that unless there was something physical that marked them all.

There was something especially depraved about it, considering who they were to Ed. But what Al had said about it—"Ed would never hurt Elysia"—nagged at him. What did Al know? What could he do, that he was being silenced about now?

Havoc pinched the bridge of his nose. _Hughes,_he groaned. _If you hadn't have done that, we may have gotten something _out_ of Al;__ he may have already saved us on his own._ Havoc sighed. _Or gotten himself killed._

It was not inconceivable that Al had tried to revive Edward through alchemy, dead or comatose, and instead created some kind of monster that wanted to devour one or the both of them from vengeance or some strange bid to replace the originals. And it wasn't so strange that Alphonse might run to his death simply for the display of brotherly dedication. _Far_ too conceivable, in fact.

He shook his head. _Hughes. Please do not have died at Edward's hands, with that being your last act. _It just wasn't right. A lifetime of service, and then this. . . . Edward, Alphonse . . . one of them was turning their entire lives up side down and backwards. All because of a damn rebellion six years ago.

Havoc sighed. He didn't want to think of Ed as dead, a little brother that had looked up at him with wide eyes and for guidance, who thought he was one of the best things in the world reduced to a body in a box, but he had to. They might kill him today. Hell, he himself may be in a box at the end of the day.

He had a duty to rid the world of people who could do nothing but harm others. That was what he had signed up to do. Protect the boarders. Serve the peace.

What if . . . this really _was_ Ed, now. The only Ed they could have.

He was starting to see Mustang's point. Yet, if he were doing something that no one else could, and they stopped it. . . .

_I don't want to be forgotten_, Ed's tiny voice said.

His long years of hardened military service made his brain demand otherwise from the simple, from the good. He couldn't believe it, especially if he wanted to survive. Things were never that simple. Things never would be.

_No,_ he thought, as he stepped out of the car, gazing at the darkened hill beyond the gate at which so many troops were gathering, _It's not Edward. It's just a monster that needs to be taken back to the grave it came from. That's why he's here._

The troops spread out along the land. Tactical first, then large swarms of blue to back it up._ You're going after one of your own, _they failed to mention to the troops. He wondered what they'd think when they had to start shooting at another officer in blue. Who exactly they'd feel betrayed by, and whom they would start asking questions of.

Havoc readied himself for the explosions, the screams, the blue that would paint the air. He and other officers stayed a few hundred yards behind the front, following groups as the line became thinner and thinner. They went so far in, before he was ordered to stay by one of the generals.

He was in charge of securing the buildings and mausoleums, which was actually the mostly likely place that someone would wait to ambush them. The alchemists had charge of that, and Havoc watched as Armstrong and a few others went about the task with a few members remaining from a special ops squad.

It was over two hours in the chill wind, with the graves and grass and people he didn't know, before anything happened. A private was sent back to him, saying the cemetery had been preliminarily cleared. All that was left was a few outbuildings.

And no where, was there anything suspicious.

"That's impossible," Havoc said, looking to Armstrong.

"Unless the young man was lying to us," he answered back, looking over the hill toward the party whose protection the boy was currently under. They were maybe a half-mile away, but Havoc made a bee line toward them, leaving a lieutenant in charge behind him.

Armstrong came as well, and made it there long before Havoc did. When Havoc made it there, the black-haired boy was taking verbal fire, complimentary handcuffs and all.

"No no, they were here," he insisted. "A blond man with a long ponytail; a transmutation circle on the grass. They were dragging the Furer's wife. . . ."

"You didn't say that before," Havoc said abruptly, taking him by the shoulder and turning him around. "Dragging _where_?"

"I don't know," was the first thing out of the kid's mouth. "It was in the military part of the cemetery. "There was a mausoleums where he was, I thought. . . ." He looked positively white.

Fletcher let the wide-eyed, frightened look play for a while before he glanced around from person to person with them. They didn't recognize him yet, thank god; he was barely holding his ground as it was with the meager info Al had told him, but this had not been the plan. Lead them, yes; handcuffs, no. He figured that if he just repeated two or three facts over and over, they'd figure he was just a useless kid who didn't know anything and would treat him as such, leaving him free to escape back in town, and that was fine with him because what he didn't have to say he wouldn't screw up. But without them finding anything . . . was it possible Al was just leading him to his doom? Was _that_ the diversion? Let Fletcher use all his bs skills until he gets throw into the dungeon because of the military's complete exacerbation with him?

Dammit, the colorlessness in his face was getting real. If he kept this up, he'd probably slip somehow.

"Major Havoc, you had your men cover all the mausoleums and tombs, right?" the general asked sharply, murder in his eyes.

"Yes sir!" the blond man crisply replied. "Every one in the area I was assigned. Did Johnson's party finish with his and the supply buildings?"

"Yes. . . ." the general put his hands on his hips and stared at Fletcher, trying to break him with his venomous glare. "There aren't any tombs in the military section, are there?"

Fletcher was unable to breathe when that realization dawned on every officer in the little party surrounding him, one by one.

"You're right," one of them said.

They eyes instantly turned upon him. Fletcher stared in terror back, but just as one was about to grab him, he cried, "Wasn't the Fuhrer going to speak at the monument of the fallen soldier yesterday? Weren't they going to dedicate that? _Isn't that a tomb thing!_"

Havoc and the others straightened, looking over to the black building on the next hill. There it was, plain as day, tarp no where in sight.

"General, did you have any squads building-bust over there?" he asked without looking back.

"Armstrong, you think you can handle it?" the general said immediately.

"I'll go with the special ops _immediately,_sir!" he roared, flexing his biceps before he did so.

Havoc covered his ears reflexively, but all Fletcher could do was flinch and wish for the world to stop ringing in the aftermath.

He and about half the force rushed to the grassy area surrounding the new memorial mausoleum, and surrounded from a good distance as the special forces moved forward. Havoc held his breath from his distance.

Armstrong melted the metal door from afar, and when the smoke cleared, some unfortunate soul had to be the first to go in, followed by a small river of people.

They waited. No shots, no screams, no alchemy. Just silence and the wind, and then, faintly, the commander, motioning his general in.

There was about thirty seconds of nothing while several thousand men waited, and then the same commander reappeared and went straight to Havoc. "You're in charge of responding back to the Fuhrer, aren't you Major Havoc?" he asked.

"What is it?" Havoc asked through his teeth.

"You might want to see this, Sir," he said. "I hope you can figure it out."

"Is the danger cleared?" he asked stiffly.

"Yessir."

"Good." Havoc's clapped the guy on the shoulder, and pushed Fletcher into him. "Arrest him, and don't let him see light again until the Fuhrer says so." He gave Fletcher, who looked torn between confusion and worry, a sympathetic shrug. "Just covering the bases, kid."

The monument's open cavern exposed the starkly-lit back of the general, and several ops units cluttering the dark space to either side of the man. Being in the setting sun, the skylight did nothing to illuminate the space; Havoc walked in, only to see nothing in his peripherals. He waited for the general to say something, but he was strangely quiet until Havoc came right up to his shoulder, and saw what the man was staring it.

On the grey wall, were streaks of at least a gallon of red. An elaborate transmutation circle dripping down the stone, with an uninterrupted _sheet _of red over the floor in a radius a foot from the wall and up the last six inches of the wall. And around the array's circumference, were eleven little words: _To wash away my sins with the blood of the many._

Havoc's head came forward on his neck, to match his bugging eyes. The array looked like one he seen Ed penciling out years and years ago. He hadn't minded Havoc looking over his shoulder, or even explaining the parts to him to help work it out, because he knew the man would never be able to reproduce any of what he was seeing. This thing here, was very similar to that array for human transmutation, despite being entirely different from the one on the tower, or the one on Al's hand. "Where did all this blood _come _from?"

Silently, the general pointed to his left. Havoc followed his hand. The soldiers? Who . . . were . . .

Havoc stared. Who were bending over Hughes's placid face.

He gaped mutely, unable to make words come out. It was only the general's voice that stopped him from crying out in pain.

"Major Havoc," he said from his own state of shock, "How are they still alive?"

"_What?"_he hissed.

"This is more blood than two people can lose and still be alive. Who else did he sacrifice to this altar?"

"I . . . I don't know." Havoc shook his head, busy shoving his fingers against Hughes's neck. There was in fact a pulse. A strong, _regular_one. "Wait, did you say 'two'?"

Havoc spun around. Yes, there was in fact another body. One soldier stood over her; a medic, most likely. From the top half of her that he could see, she looked untouched, though the man was picking at the clothing on her lower half.

"What's wrong with them?" Havoc asked the man, still shocked.

"I don't know," he said. "I definitely can't figure it out here. They aren't dying so we should get them out. But, Major, before we do that"—he indicated Riza's right hand, placed upon her left upon her stomach—"do you know what this is?"

Havoc bent down. It was the same array that was on Alphonse. But this one was drawn in blood, caked on top of her skin. A quick check revealed Hughes had an identical one. "Can you wake them up?" he asked the medic.

He shook his head. "I'm trying, but, she's not, despite no obvious reason. There could always be head trauma, but I can't see anything. . . . I don't know _what_to do with that array though; it looks like bad news?"

Havoc got on his knees and picked up Riza's marked hand in his. It was a blood seal . . . it wouldn't be keeping in a soul, would it?

"What are the chances breaking this will kill her?"

The man stared at him for a few long moments before saying anything. "I'm not an alchemist; I have no idea. But hell, I wouldn't chance it. You want the Fuhrer crisping you when you tell him his wife _was_ alive?"

Havoc put his head in his hand with a sigh. Behind him, the general said, "Well, Major, you have info to report back to the Fuhrer like you are assigned. Go do it."

"Yessir." But he did not move. ". . . Sir?"

"Yes Major?" the man asked, still unmoving and stoic.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm just trying to decide if an evacuation order would do any good."

Havoc and the medic watched their CO carefully. The ops man behind them near Hughes slowed his check, equally unable to shake the man's hopelessness. Havoc and the medic shared a glance. The medic went back to his respective work, and Havoc simply stared at Riza's hand.

Three people incapacitated, doing no good to anyone. If their general was down for the count, and they could have Hughes (in a calmer capacity, now that Gracia and Elysia were live and kicking). . . . If they could have Al, who could stop Ed. . . . If Riza could tell them what Ed was doing, and what he had done, and prevent Mustang from getting into a death match. . . . What was it worth to them? If he didn't try, he would never forgive himself. If they were going to die anyway—

Riza, if given a choice, would order him to do this. Before she'd let him do it to Hughes. Hughes had a family to go back to, a daughter and housewife that needed him. Mustang needed Riza, yes he did, but they had no children. And she would tell him to. She would.

_Wash my hands__of sin..._

Havoc gripped Riza's hand tightly, and then whetted his free hand with saliva. Then, making sure no one noticed, he rubbed at the outer ring of the circle. It came apart easily, breaking the crusted red in just a few strokes. Havoc put the hand down, and then touched Riza's neck. For thirty seconds, he waited, and there was still a pulse, still breath. No signs of stopping.

"Major, are you going to le—Mrs. Furher, m'am!"

Barely, her eyes were open, staring down first at the man near her feet, and then the one still connected to her hand. She looked worn like hell, and that she wanted to kill something. Havoc's eyebrows rose.

"Havoc," she growled through her teeth in recognition, almost slurred it in grogginess. "Elrics?"

"Not here," he said, rubbing her hand. "But we're running out of time—"

"Havoc," she repeated, turning around his touch and squeezing his hand in a deathgrip. "Get me my _husband,_Havoc. They didn't kill him yet, did they?"

"No, no, he's alive," he said quickly. "For now—"

"Take. Me _to_him," she repeated in between breaths, her hand clumsily lifting clawing up his arm until it hit his neck, where it started to squeeze, weakly. "Or I will kill you."

"Riza." He picked off her arm and leaned close to her mouth. "What happened? What do you need me to tell him, I'll do it—"

"No," she breathed. "I'll kill him. I'll kill them _all."_

"What did they do," the general cut in, hard. "You may have information that can save us. Tell me it, now."

She had just enough time to glare at him before an officer came running in and hung on the doorframe. "Sir! We've got a problem! Headquarters is under attack and the Elrics have been spotted at the pavilion tower!"

"What! Dammit!" He turned to Riza. "Is there anything they told you, anything at all!"

"He's out to get the children," she said, pulling up on Havoc's shoulder. "Every last one."

"Major Havoc, do whatever you did to General Hughes and then do whatever he tells you to. You," he said to the commander in the door, striding past him, "we're moving out. We've got no time."

* * *

Al took a deep breath, and stared at the ceiling of the cell. His heartbeat was slow, and he was unable to rouse himself out of the heaviness it put on his mind and body. But it did not stop him from thinking all together, or even about important things. Those things came through loud and clear, just . . . _slowly._

His lids over his brown eyes blinked a few times in the near-darkness before the thoughts came. Shadows from the gas lamps flickered over the wooden ceiling as he watched them.

He was still alive. Again. Once again, he had somehow been rescued from a bad turn of events into an even worse one. Here he was in a cell, most likely near his interrogation room, unable to know when the next official thirsting for his blood would come, to drag him to a room where no one could hear you scream, and torture him.

He closed his eyes, tightly. _Hughes.__So much times have changed in the last six years, haven't they? I guess I'm not the only one of you that's had it hard._

_Good._

He allowed himself to chuckle. Life was so dismal anyway, he might as well enjoy the bitterness that wouldn't leave. It wasn't like he'd ever act on it.

Waking up that day, it was like a dream. . . . His body _hurt,_but he was returned to beautiful life and he finally had Ed, had Ed after all these years, and life was back the way it used to be, the way they had yearned for for so long.

_He looked back to Edward's sleeping form, where it would invariably be for a long time to come. Slowly, he went back to dusting the small picture held loosely in his worn hands, the picture of bright, shining faces, and a time that he prayed would not be forgotten. He wouldn't be around forever, but he wanted the happiness of those times to still exist in the world, for someone. He wasn't sure they would ever again for him, and he wasn't sure anyone in the country right now had the strength to remember it._

Isn't it strange, _Al thought, setting the picture back into its tiny, forlorn place of so long in the darkened room, _that the happiest events in life only come in response to righting the worst things we have done?

_It was like waking from a dream, that day six years ago when he was given life and breath again. The nerves screamed and the memories of before burned through his mind, but only for a moment, because then Ed was there, running over and crying with Al so hard that he didn't know what to do. The light would have been shining, a bright sunny day, if only they hadn't chosen to transformed ourselves deep within the basements of Central's buildings._

If we hadn't had the bad luck to choose to be down there, perhaps we could have been aware of what was going on above us, and would have both escaped the fate that fell upon you that day.

_The picture set down with a quiet knock, accepting its place without protest. _That fell upon _me._

_Two brothers in that picture. Military friends, crowding around the background, all jovial. The frame regained its place on the edge of the bedside table, surrounded by the long strap medal of honor. It was neither a uniform badge, nor a heavy metal neck piece. It was a little glass thing, meant to hang on a wall of a loved one's house. Meant to frame a memorial space._

_Al rubbed the back of his neck, and quietly shut the door to the bedroom behind him. His eyes, as usual, feel upon the round dining room table as he stepped into the room, the papers he'd tried to gather together into some semblance of cleanly order in his last moments of consciousness before crawling into bed last night at about four AM. The bedrooms were at the back of the house, but it was a tiny old cottage in the country, with the back rooms separated from the front living space only by a thin wall that created a corridor: from the door to the first bedroom, he could barely make out a chair and a window._

_The cold that had seeped in was biting again in the quiet white light. They glass was frosted again, indicating the same cold outside that had held the northeastern countryside for the last five months. He could start a fire, but that would diminish his tiny supply of wood in the house, and he already had to make breakfast, and so many other menial little household chores. . . . Blankets, or a fire. . . . Oh the excitement in his life now. Little choices like that, were all he had to look forward to on a daily basis._

_He sighed, and tried not to look at the round designs scribbled on the sheets of paper; two infrequent letters at the bottom of the stack he had yet to answer; of the room behind him: Despite it all, people were still depending on him. He just couldn't get away from it. His world had fallen apart, and yet, he still wasn't free of it. He couldn't start over. Not that he didn't feel guilty about saying so, but anything, anything, to not live the rest of his life in purgatory._

_He yawned and rubbed his arms as he shuffled along the warped wooden floor. He slept maybe four hours a night, now: sleeping in a room alone still felt weird, even after all this time. And so many days he felt no enjoyment at all, just dull emotions to insulate him from breaking, that it was hard to sleep. There simply was so little reason to wake up the next day that there was little motivation to make it come faster. If he could stay awake, he could at least hope that he could accomplish something, though he never did. Tonight would undoubtedly be the same—curled up in the corner surrounded by blankets, afraid to sleep, wishing he were able to be of worth to someone who could talk back._

_Sighing, Al dropped his hand and pushed the little stack of papers over as he went by to "the kitchen," the cabinets and stove to one side of the livingroom._

_As he stood, zoning out at an image of the chipped paint on the stove, to keep from thinking anything too harsh, there was a noise that broke his reprieve. It was a knock, he realized after flinching; a muffled tapping from the front door. He frowned at the slab of wood, not fifteen feet from him. It wasn't the grocery delivery. It was nearing sunset as well; who would be coming to his house at this time of day?_

_He lived a few miles outside of L'Efrel, considered the sister city of La Fantae, though it was a speck-on-the-map village about fifty miles northeast, where trains only came when there was a demand. It was as far removed from life as he could get, and not have to grow his own sustenance. As he maneuvered around the sparsely-furnished sitting area, he wondered, numbly, if the military had finally caught up with him. They would have timing like this._

_Without preamble, Al took the doorknob in his hand and pulled the door open. Before him stretched the fallow fields of the mountains' valley, and nothing more._

_A footfall on the wood behind him, out in the room._

Back door—

_He spun on his heel and slammed the door behind him shut. What stood before him made his heart stop._

_His brother was standing there—pale, tall, and lean. He was smiling, though, an almost unrecognizable gesture. It was _malicious.

"_Al," he said, spreading out his hands. "I missed you."_

_Al shook his head, backing into the door. His hand went for the knob. "No—!"_

_Ed tipped his head, but that wicked grin did not disintegrate. "Yes?"_

_Al's hand slid off the knob; he realized suddenly that he had a much better weapon at hand. He threw his hands out in front of him until they connected. He would have only one chance, human insides were really so fragile, and against something like that—_

_As Al pulled his hands apart, blue skirted over the table next to Ed and jumped into the wall Al had his back to. He aborted his attempts immediately and dodged from the electric waves bounding after him. Part of the door molded out into the room before Ed gave up on his own work._

_Al smacked his hands together again, flinging out into the kitchen, but the first thing he found as he fell across the room was the stove, hot and untouchable. The tiny amount of time in which he had to change the direction of his hands to the wall a few feet away made the difference. Just as his hand smacked the brick, alien blue flew from the ground beneath his feet and burned up his legs._

_Afraid his legs were being seared, he bent into the pain, and then there was another boom, alchemy that liquefied the wall and spun it out around his left arm. Al jerked away, but it was too late; the wood around beneath his knees and below his elbow had already solidified. He pulled away twice, in a panic, but there was no give. With a small cry, Al looked back into the room, and found Ed standing against the upturned table, a few hairs out of place and a scrape along his cheek. Next to him was a mesa-shaped uprooting from the floor, once aimed for his gut but malformed from the lack of energy and out of place._

_Ed shook a little, but it looked more out of fury than anything else. After a second, he straightened up, pushed his hair out of his face, and sighed._

_Without a word, he crossed the disrupted floor. Al waited tensely, his heart throbbing in his ears. When Ed came within a three feet of him and looked like he was reaching out, Al threw his fist. Without a way to fake, Ed caught the movement easily, and caught Al's wrist. Al cursed, and tried to yank his arm away, but it was like his arm was enshrouded in concrete._

_Ed shook his head. He jerked Al's hand towards him, forcing him to look at him. When he caught Al's eyes, he gave him one cool, disdainful look, and then crushed his broad fist into Al's stomach._

_Al gasped, caving around his arm. He sucked up air, but with his diaphragm unable to expand and the air out of his lungs, within seconds his thick gasping quieted and his body fell as much as it could, into Ed's awaiting arms._

_The world blurred around Al's vision of the floor spinning around his head; suddenly, he felt his limbs free in a whirr of static electricity, but they wouldn't obey any command. Not in recent years, as he feared that he was going to be robbed of life, did he feel such a great need to live. It rattled something loose in him, something that he'd covered his old hopes and dreams with. It made him panic. As he gasped, painfully, for breath, his body stayed limp and heavy; he was lowered onto the floor, and vaguely, realized he was staring at the ceiling._

_Ed straightened in his view. Al may have blacked out for a few moments, he wasn't sure, but when he next was slightly cognizant, Ed was saying something, slowly and softly._

"_Follow me to Central City within three days' time, Alphonse, and you will get what you've been waiting for all these years."_

"_No. . ." Al tried to reach up to him, but it didn't quite work. Through his tunnel vision, Ed was going off toward the bedrooms. "Don't—"_

"—Alphonse."

Al stiffened on the bench, and forced his apparently haggard breathing to slow. But. . . . If his breath could quicken, then the seal was wearing off. Yet, if he played his cards right, he might have a few more hours before they thought they could mangle him again to any effect.

"Yes Mustang?" he asked, keeping his eyes closed. There were bars. Bars were your friend, at times. Bars kept predators at bay.

Roy nodded. The state alchemist that had graciously agreed to guard Al throughout this time had reported that array was starting to wear thin, and whatever it was doing might degrade within the next hour or two. So he'd come down here, hoping there'd be some use in doing so. There was really nothing else that he could do; he was merely waiting for some group to tell him a fight had started, or to be alchemized.

Roy, sitting in a chair taken from the opposite wall, ran his hand through his hair and then rested his forehead in his palm, his elbow on his knee. "What are your demands, Alphonse."

"Demands?" Al repeated in wonder. "I have no demands. Why do you think I do?" His tone was slow and resigned; almost dreamy in its listlessness, like he couldn't quite catch his breath. "I came here to get my brother; that is all."

His eyes flicked over to Mustang, slowly, and Roy paled at the hollowness of the one he could see, the ghost-like circles under his eye, the entirety of the skin around it being an unnatural shade of red or purple.

Roy had the sinking suspicion that he was right: that all Al was here to do was retrieve Edward, and thereby stop Ed. Like him trying to destroy the city was really nothing much at all, if it was prevented.

After getting enough of his stunned expression, Al looked back toward the ceiling and closed his eyes with a soft sigh.

"And after you get him?" Roy hazarded. "What will you do then?"

Al blinked his eyes open and considered the space above him, tipping his head a little. "I considered blowing my brains out, a few times," he said. He did his best to shrug, but it didn't really work. "But then there would be no one left to take care of him."

Roy stared. This really was no surprise, coming from the Al he'd seen just after the rebellion, but he had so many more memories of a vibrant Alphonse Elric, in the days of youth and promise, that he winced. But he had to press on; he had a job to do.

"'Take care of him?'"

Al nodded. "Yes, Mustang."

No further information was forthcoming.

"You do _realize_ he's moving around? _Alive,_and the like?"

Al nodded again. "Yes, Mustang."

"Alphonse," Roy began steadily, frowning, _"Why_did you throw me out a window?"

Al blinked suddenly, and then, widening, his eyes fell on Roy. There was fear, confusion, and possibly, recognition, there.

"_Did _I now?" he asked, as if astonished. It was a weird gesture—his eyes saying something completely different from what his mouth was spinning. There was sincerity in both actions but . . . to what extent?

Roy narrowed his eyes shrewdly, and then, after a moment, replied, "Yes, you did." He could play along with this game. He adopted the airy, hypothetical tone as well.

Al looked away from him, and the eye Roy could see searched around the room as Al thought. "And was it a _big_ window?"

"Yes. And quite a large fall."

"Did you _die?"_

"No, but almost. I could have."

Al's tone was almost childlike now. To Roy's horror, Al was starting to smile. "And do you hurt now? In the aftermath," he turned on Roy, face maniacal. "You go about your duties knowing that they are but a failing cause? Every day, you wish to die, and wonder why you were not let to? You bemoan that you were _ever _brought into this _world,_ because you have even _less_ than nothing?"

". . . Yes?" Roy replied automatically. What else was there to say?

"Huh." Al turned back to the ceiling and did his best to shrug. "How odd." His tone suddenly changed. The creepy look on his face didn't subside, necessarily, but it seemed to turn inward. He still smiled, but it was more one of contentment. He hiccuped a thin laugh once, and then another one, each one sounding a menagerie of desperate, amused, and frightened.

_My God, _Roy thought, _he_ did _go insane._

"What did you _do,_ Alphonse?" he begged.

"I didn't do anything," the man sobbed, crossing his feet under the bench and rolling his head. _"You _did."

Roy shook his head, and came forward where he sat. Alphonse, what are you talking about? Please—"

Al rolled his head, sick tears sliding down his face. "You don't even _know, _do you?"

"Alphonse, I tried to save Ed during the Rebellion, you_ saw _me. You were there! We all did what we could, you _know _that—"

"It's not that; it's not that at all!"

"Then what? Please, Al, stop this—get your revenge on me, but don't drag others in!"

"No; no, I won't tell you."

"_Why?"_

He bit his lip. "I shouldn't. It would spread too much _pain--_"

"Fine, then!" Roy cried, throwing his hand down. "Just call Ed off! Tell us how to get to him, then, before he takes everyone down!"

Al shook his head, gritting his teeth against the pounding headache from his swollen skin and joints. "I can't, I can't; he was never mine to control, how can you think that?"

"Al, what's going on! Tell me,_ tell __me _so that I can understand."

"No," he hissed suddenly, stilling in a bout of clarity. "I will be the good man and not tell you how I feel, not drag you into my pain, no matter _who _made it. I will suffer alone, because that's what good boys do. I don't want you to know; you shouldn't have to know what came of it. And if I have my way, you will never know. . . ." He laughed, hopelessly. "Never will. . . ." He hiccuped repeatedly, sick and heaving and yet so, incredibly, blessed.

_I don't have to tell you, now._

Roy simply stared.

_I never will._

* * *

In the dark tunnel below the dungeons, Ed waited patiently against the wall. The arched tunnels were thickly insulated with stone, to the point that he couldn't hear anything going on above him. However, whatever went through these halls presently echoed readily. A good helping of dirt covered the floors and walls, along with dust and cobwebs; he wiped at a section of wall before he leaned back against it, resigning his jacket to it.

And then, he heard them.

"Where the hell are we going, Al?" demanded a hissed whisper. "How can you see anything down here?"

For his part, Al simply sighed and said, "Wait here."

"Hey! What? You're going . . . going to come back . . . right?" the voice asked weakly.

Al did not respond and his footsteps continued on. Ed touched his hands together and created, fully-wrought, a torch attached to the wall from the stone and organic material around. It illuminated little other than the area directly around his face, and Al came right up to the edge of the halo.

"We're ready," he announced.

"Good." Ed looked up at the ceiling. "We're right on time."

Al nodded. "I'll set us up; you go. You wanna talk to him?"

There was a decided quiet in the next few seconds. Ed shrugged when Russell didn't say anything from his unseen spot; Ed knew he was listening. "There will be better times."

"C'mon Russell, let's go," Al said, turning around. He held Ed's wrist for just a second before he slipped out of range.

Ed patted the hand and then gripped it tightly. Al stopped, staring at him in the dark, and then clasped him on the shoulder, hard. Then, without a word, he released Ed, and Ed let his hand slip through his fingers.

"Anywhere around here you should be fine," Ed said to his back. "I'll make sure of it."

"Well then," Al said with a wave, "I will be fine."

Ed watched the dark space where he had been. He really had nothing else to say, then. Perhaps he had been wrong, and Al hadn't differentiated as far as he thought. He couldn't quite comprehend how Al would _not _be directly influenced by his will; it was, after all, _their _will. Ed shrugged with a hum, and went for the door around the nearest corner that opened onto the stairs. Maybe Al really was able to understand how this cause was bigger than both of them. Maybe now, he was able to feel the force that drove Ed as Al's own.

"Now listen very carefully, Russell," he heard as he went, "there is going to be an explosion, and then we are going to run."

"_What?_ You're going to blow up a _government building?"_

"It's not like I haven't done it before. Now, this is what's going to go down. See this intersection we're standing at? Just so you're not surprised, the ceiling's gonna fall down in front of us, and then we're gonna be a decoy if anyone comes by, gotcha?"

Whistling softly, Ed jammed his hands in his pockets as he trudged up the ancient, unlit stairs, playing Russell's resulting incredulous squeak over in his mind with a fair bit of amusement. With any luck, that astonishment would be the same emotion on a lot of other people's faces as well.

He changed his form just behind the upper door, and then pushed it open. The stone cut-away made no noise in the supply room it let into; through the wooden door on the far side of the supply room, he could hear voices. They were close. Very, very close.

Ed frowned. They were probably around the corner, but he would have to be careful. "Hmmm. . . ." He grabbed a rifle from the rack next to him, just in case he had to look the part, and then confidently strode out the door.

The voices did not stop. It was in fact Al's voice, and then, another he remembered from two days before: Mustang's.

"I didn't do anything," came Al's voice. _"You _did."

A pause, and then: "Take your anger out on me, Al, please, end my life, that's fine, but don't hurt all these people; please, they were victims as well, don't you understand that? We _all_ fought, we _all_ tried—Don't you think I _wanted_ to save Edward? You _saw _me, during the rebellion!"

Ed sucked in a breath. No reason to let _that_ go on any longer. Soon enough, Mustang would get what he wanted, and Al would be free of his cage. Ed looked at the veins popping in his sickly arm, and then turned back to the wall. _It will be enough this time, it will._

"That has nothing to do with it, Mustang. It never did. Yes, I hurt because of that, but I've come to terms with the fact that there was nothing more I could do about that. No, that's not what this is about."

"Then what is it, Alphonse!"

"You don't even know, do you? So fucking pathetic."

"Then what. Tell me, Al."

"_No._"

Ed smiled. _Good boy, Al._

Alphonse chuckled. "And if I have my way, you never will. Never will. . . ."

"Al. . . ."

After a moment, Al spoke quietly, almost chanting. "I can take care of it; I _can."_

Ed clapped his hands together, and then pressed them against the wall.

Al pulled himself up to a sitting position with his legs. He stared at the bench, miserable, in pain, but determined. "I'm just here to take my brother home. That is all."

Roy frowned, unhappy, as Al turned his head to watch him apathetically. "And if you don't like that, you and Hughes can go to hell. I refuse to lose everything--"

There was the sound of electricity. And then, an instant after, a crack split open up the length of the walls around Alphonse. There was a great rumble; the foundation's shaking threw them on the ground, and then there were gray masses falling all around him.

His piercing stare continued into the air:

_I'm sorry._

* * *

A/n.

_Sorry about the fact that Chapter of Epic took an Epic amount of pages. D: And the random French-like town names. I haven't explained that yet here, but it's basically that they have a flow that works well in the cadence of the sentences. And perhaps they even sound Far. Away., due to the actual cannon Amestris towns having nothing to do with French names at all.  
_

_But look! More stuff's happening. Stuff that's leading to the (even bigger) big explosions. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading so far! How many DAYS have you spent entertaining yourself? I am succeeding, if it has. And if so, leave me a comment, even if it's nothing but pointing out what you like: D  
_

_Oh yeah, and sorry too about the "yet another scene of someone thinking." _


	8. Chapter 8:1: Day Three: The Dedication

_Memorial ch. 8 part 1: Now with cliff hangers._

_Yes, due to rearranging of scenes, chapter 8 became as long as two chapters, without really any definitive break that made it need to be two different chapters. And with how long chapter 7 was anyway, I figured we could move the towers scenes here. So basically: two-for-one action sale! sale sale...  
_

* * *

As the last pebbles of rubble fell onto the stone, Al found himself being pulled onto his feet. The black-booted feet of a uniform came into view; a hand gripped his wrist and under his shoulder, and he was suddenly flipped onto his feet. He was still dizzy from the concussion blast; he looked slowly behind him, toward the bars and where Mustang had been, but saw nothing but rubble. "Come with me," a voice said, and he followed the pull on his arm.

He stumbled forward in a fog, rounded a corner through a wall that used to be there, and just as he noticed a gaping hole in the floor half-filled in with the ceiling above him, he was pulled over it. He and the soldier pulling him were airborne for _a few seconds_, and then Al was propelled around another corner to the left, and in the darkness there where he suddenly found his forward moment jarred to a halt. He was pushed up against the cold bricks, a hand over his mouth and a forearm pinning his shoulders down. Only when Al noticed who the face belonged to did his senses come rushing back.

* * *

_**C: THE DEDICATION**_

* * *

As the crumbling structure settled, Mustang uncurled from the floor. He had been pelted by a few stones no larger than apple slices, while all around him in a ring were boulders that had been the walls and the ceiling. There were no cries or alarms, and there would not be, if everyone was where he told them to be.

It was only when he tried to pull himself up that he realized he should be looking for the cause of the explosion—but across from him, what remained of the cell was empty. He looked down the hallway toward where the other alchemist had been just in time to see the end of a blue coattail twist around the surviving corner, and on the floor, the officer he had been looking for.

_Ed._

Hissing, he shoved up to his hands and knees only to fall back into the floor; he grabbed his side and tried again, this time stumbling onto his feet and into the remains of the wall. He sagged a little, but in the few seconds it took him to stop his head's wobbling, he looked again at the empty cell.

He was the only one who could stop them. Regardless of which brother he had to burn to a crisp.

His ignition gloves were already on, they had been all day, and were still in tact. He was a career soldier; he had been knocked senseless before and survived, never knowing by what luck he did, and now was no time to deviate from "get up and continue to fight even if God does not follow." Taking a breath, he raised his hand and forced himself to steady. Roy pushed off the wall and dashed to the remnant of wall that made up the nearest corner. When he did a quick check of what was around it, something caught his eye. Not people, but—he stepped out from the stone and stood before a sloping pile of rubble leading down through a jagged hole at least fifteen feet wide. And in that hole, he could see a tunnel, that shouldn't have been there.

Mustang checked back only once, before jumping in.

"Mustang's taking the bait," the tall blond muttered into Alphonse's ear. "Lucky me." He listened acutely to the softening running steps, and then his snake-like eyes flicked over. "He was going to kill you, you know."

"And why would Mustang kill me?" Al spat back, completely unphased by being unable to move. "Could it _possibly_ have anything to do with the fact that _Hughes_ wanted to, too?"

"Your poor face," Ed said, gently stroking the bruised cheek.

"Answer the question," Al hissed, biting back flinching.

"Because of what he thinks I've done." Ed stepped back and reached out a hand in the distance between them. "Come now. You want to get this over with, don't you?"

"But what are you _here _for!" Al demanded, smacking his arm away. "I'm not going to let you get away with _anything _else! When you came, you told me, you told me no one would get hurt, but look what you've done! Everything is so screwed up, not to mention the entire army is after me! How the hell do I know _you're_ not trying to kill me?"

Ed's hand came swooping back in and smacked Al hard enough with the back of his hand that he stumbled to keep his balance. "You dolt, don't you get it? I _am_ your brother. And if you want him to live, you might want to come with me. I can't do this without you, because I am _also_ what you created, _you and him both_!"

His eyes flared. He grabbed Alphonse's wrist almost hard enough to break it and dragged him forward.

"What do you _mean,_'he and _I_'?!" Al cried.

The man spun on his heel and slapped him again, throwing him to the side. But he still held Al's arm, and as it was about to splinter he deftly swept Alphonse from the ground and pulled him over his shoulder, threatening to hit him hard enough to kill him if he refused to be still.

"Now shut up and listen!" he demanded, using not the older voice now natural to him, but the one that Alphonse remembered his fifteen-year-old brother to have. "'Cause I'm only gonna say this once."

* * *

Alphonse had carried him. From where they were transformed, Alphonse had brought Russell Tringham down through the labyrinth of tunnels under the city to headquarters, and now, he carried him back through them to a new destination at an amazing speed. As wind rushed past in the dark, round tunnels, an inch of water at the bottom that Alphonse's feet steadily splashed through, the way seemed to stretch on forever.

"_How . . . how can you run like this?!"_

_Those dark, slightly wide eyes had jerked down to him and he smiled like he hadn't before, during the entire time Russell had known him. "It's easy."_

Russell picked at his hair nervously, thinking the words over. It just wasn't right. Alchemic modification of some kind to your own body. . . . His brow furrowed deeply with his fretted frown. But _why?_ Surely it was illegal, and the Alphonse he knew would never have modified his own body. . . . He bit his lip with a sigh. It must have just been a trick to scare him, something they learned;_ temporary. _. . . It wasn't possible to run like that without changing the muscle structures, the weights and masses.

Russell looked over the edge of the tower and went over the calculations again. Anything, to get his mind off of the thousands of soldiers amassed around him.

"_Behind the National Church" happened to be one of the most frightening places Russell had ever seen. It backed up closely to a brick building five stories high, the walls and the uneven, cobbled ground blackened by sludge of unknown kinds over innumerable years. Out of the ground, white steam rose from round grates that collected the mystery substances pouring down them._

_Behind and all around the overflowing dumpsters were small dead animals, and creepy-crawly things that probably shouldn't still be living. He was lucky he hadn't found some pale, dumped body yet. The air was tinged with things that didn't quite smell right, and for not the first time Fletcher almost gagged in front of him. Any bodily fluids he may add to the scene, though, Russell thought, would hardly be noticed._

_A little more than halfway down the back wall of the church (which was, in fact, a massive cathedral with dark spires stretching out to the gray sky and blocking most of the latent sun), the alley abruptly ended in another wall. Unfortunately—as Russell saw it—their pathway turned a blind corner obscured by white haze, into a good-sized, roughly square dead-end area enclosed on three sides by more of the brick building adjacent to the church that was covered in unknown sludge._

_Russell turned in a circle to survey the scene, staring up as he went. There were no windows here, but there _were_ bars, built into the structure and then left unsalvaged when whatever windows _had _been there had been bricked over. Toward the back of the space, at the base of where a door had once been, was a larger manhole, this one iron and fully-covered. At least two people could fit into it, and Russell did not want to know what kind of people possibly had._

_All in all, his consensus was that he wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible, and then forget any questions about why the hell someone like Edward Elric would know about it. And _then _he would strangle whoever made the place._

"_No goddamn good can come from this. We should get out of here."_

_Fletcher hugged his shoulders and shrugged. Even though the steam was warm, it left only wet cold in its wake. "At least we know we're in the right place."_

"_In the right place to get _murdered,_ maybe!" Russell hissed back._

"_Jesus Christ brother, grow a goddamned backbone!" Fletcher snapped._

"_Easy for you to say, hiding in the damn steam! Put _me _as the lookout, hell! If he comes and finds me, you he's gonna see you too!"_

_Fletcher frowned. "Why do you think Ed's gonna _kill _us?"_

"_He tattooed directions on your _arm_, Fletcher. That is _not _a normal thing to do."_

"_Guy coulda not had time!" Fletcher threw his hands into the air, while at the same time only about twenty percent of him vaguely visible. "Dammit, brother! _Put_ up and _shut_ up, or else your ax murderer's going to get us both, and I will _guilt _you from the _grave!"

"_I'm too young to die," Russell moaned back at him, but folded his arms and worked into his post, behind a tall dumpster and several stacked boxes._

Real classy work there, _he thought to himself. Dying in an alley was not his idea of the glorified hero's death he'd always assumed he'd have. And if he was someday going to be undeservedly robbed of his vivacious life during one of his suspect ingredient gatherings (that he had yet to do), then he would settle with being the beginning of a great murder-mystery that at the end of great intrigue, the bad guys would be caught and put to justice in a nationally-acclaimed trial (and people would thereby learn how great of a person he had been). Edward and Alphonse Elric though, he thought, were not the type of people that would ever be caught, if for some reason they'd been convinced to turn to the bad side. And if he didn't know who the hell they were meeting, how the hell were the police ever going to track the men down? Russell sighed and crossed his arms, resigning himself to leaning against a cage of metal milk crates, listening to the steam hiss at them, and the sounds of a city working._

"_Hey, brother?" came Fletcher's voice after a while._

"_Yeah?" he asked, flipping his bangs out of his face._

"_When are you going to tell me what Al looks like?"_

* * *

_It was about an hour later, around ten minutes into another cycle of gusting steam rising through the ground when Russell thought he spied a shape appear in the winding opaque forest. At first, there was a dark shape flitting through the white; then, when it appeared again, it was slightly darker, and bigger, with vague but decidedly human pieces. The figure walked easily through the narrow alley, with purpose but no hurry. When he got close enough, a military uniform's shape and color appeared within the obscurity._

_The man stopped at the right-angle of the alley and put one hand on his hip, tipping his head back. His face was moderately long, and thin, framed by short, bronzy hair pushed over to one side. He was not blond, nor was he over six feet tall. Russell's mouth fell open. The man was rather paler than he remembered from the pictures, and slightly darker under the eyes and around the mouth, but recognizable nonetheless. Seven foot tall armor he was not, but even after all these years, he still managed to pull off a decidedly frightening posture._

_Russell looked back to where Fletcher was, but he was lost from Russell's view, doing his job. __Quietly, he turned back, suddenly frozen by the fact that the ball was in his court when all he had to work on was a fuzzy memory of a picture from six years ago.  
_

"_You can come out now," the officer announced. "We have _work _to do."_

_There was a moment of a pregnant silence in the alley. The steam whispered, and no one moved. Russell held his eyes closed and silently prayed, then bolstered his courage. Keeping his back to the bins and crates, he slid into view, his head tipped to the side. The man smiled when he saw him, but, Russell noticed, it was a predatory thing._

_The blond frowned, and set his stance. He forced himself to not look at where Fletcher hid. "You got out."_

_The soldier tipped his chin, but his voice was playful. "I did."_

"_How."_

_A dark, curling smile split onto the youthful face. "I _broke_ out."_

_Behind his shelter, Fletcher, readied to assist at a moment's notice (though he wasn't sure how, now that he realized that the man who had come was beyond Russell _and_ blocking their exit), stopped his train of thought and stared. Something he had always wished to see, always had to imagine. . . . It really was . . . Alphonse?_

"_All right," Russell said. He felt vulnerable, his back to a dead end and his torso fully exposed without a way to defend it, but he hadn't made it through all these years without knowing how to work bravado. And that was something he would be surprised to find Alphonse Elric ever acquire. "Where's Ed?"_

"_Working."_

_Russell stared. Well, now what._

_While he was thinking, Alphonse looked dubiously around the alley. "This sure is a crazy alley."_

"_You fucking picked it!" Russell snapped. The ferocity with which his reply came took him aback, but if his words were going to come out angry, he might as well work with it._

"_It didn't used to be like _this."

I'll buy that when I can shove that lie through your teeth,_ Russell seethed. He took a step forward. "You've got some fucking explaining to do! Spill it!"_

"_Woah, Russell, Russell, Russell!" Al took a step back, and held up his hands, his clean and youthful face having the audacity to look friendly. "I haven't seen you in years, and this is how you greet me? Calm down, would you?"_

"_Do you always alchemize things on people's arms, Al, or was that Edward's doing?"_

_The other sighed. "Is that all you're worried about? It'll biodegrade, you kno–"_

"_Of course that's not all I'm worried about!" he snapped. "_What_ is Ed doing to everyone and why are you in that!" The blond man desperately gestured with his arms; it just started flowing, and now it didn't want to stop. Behind him, he was sure Fletcher was groaning. But what was he supposed to do? He had thought he was going to die for these last two and half days—hell, he came here to mourn the loss of a person standing right in front of him—and now, he would either die, or be saved. And as time went on, his hope toward salvation was ebbing fast. He hurriedly searched over Al's face for signs of lies or innocence as they talked back and forth, and he wasn't sure in the least what it was he saw._

"_And why did I want to come _meet _you,_that_ is what you should ask me, Russell, because _that_ is why I am here." Al straightened his shoulders, and cracked a bright smile. Somehow, it looked like a threat. "I need your help, Russell. Fletcher."_

"Help?"_ Russell asked. "Our _help?"

"_Yes." Al bowed slightly, his hand sweeping out. "Ed and I have a very important mission to accomplish, and as it stands now, we can't do it alone."_

"_Tell me what it is," Russell demanded, though he felt his voice suddenly go annoyingly quiet and weak._

"_Well, I _could_... But then you'd know."_

"_Don't play games with me, Al," he snapped. "Why don't you tell me why you have our array on that tower."_

"_Brother!" Fletcher suddenly cried, emerging into view. "You were trying to bring back Ed, weren't you!"_

_Horrified, Russell whirled toward him. "No! We—!"_

_He suddenly realized he'd taken his eyes off of "the threat" and instantly spun back on his heel, glaring at Alphonse. Al smiled back, deviously. Russell cursed._

"_No, Fletcher," Al suddenly said, gently. "We were trying to save some people that are very special."_

_He spread his arms graciously. Russell shook his head, warningly. "If you want to play games with people lives, Alphonse, do it with someone else's."_

_"Oh Russell," Al smiled, shaking his head. "Stop acting like you have a _choice._ If you don't come with me, I won't tell you a _thing._ You signed up for this when you agreed to help me with the research."_

"_This is hardly what I signed up for," Russell retorted._

_"Will you take my deal or not?" Al asked._

_Russell glared at him, pale and weak-kneed. But he continued to stare him down-- _

"_Brother, stop being a pansy," Fletcher announced suddenly. He strode in front of him and shoved him back. He set his stance and crossed his arms, tipping his chin to Al. "What're you offering."_

"_Now this is who I like," Alphonse said graciously. He stepped forward and reached an arm out around Fletcher's shoulders, and positively purred. "I need you to help me with a little . . . _distraction."

* * *

_Alphonse's fingers walked up his chest as he bent in close, and his eyes narrowed from some secret plot he was relishing. "Now," his deep voice rumbled as he reached around Russell's immobile body and the youth watched him intensely, "this won't hurt a bit, I _promise."

_He touched his hands together as he put his chin on Russell's shoulder, and then placed his left hand over the back of the blond's head. Russell gasped and Fletcher, behind them, started back, but, as the blue alchemic light flashed at the top of Russell's head, the shiver that shot through him seemed to be exquisitely enjoyable—he arched his back against the wall and panted breathlessly. Alphonse arced his hand down around to Russell's waist, and as he did so, light blond hair appeared and followed with it._

"_Now." Without waiting for anything, Alphonse put his hands against Russell's chest and swung him swiftly against the wall, where he clapped his hands together one more time and put them against the man's body. One held Russell's right arm, and his other traced a line down Russell's front from his collar to his thigh._

_The alchemy that transformed his clothes made Russell's heart race: the electric energy surrounded his entire body, but did not do more than bounce off the surface of his skin. For a moment, Russell closed his eyes, reveling in the warmth that was like clothes fresh out of a dryer attacking his body with the force of a fluffy, rabid pillow._

_As Alphonse's hands disappeared, Russell, trapped in a fuzzy mind-set of how much he was in love with alchemy, simply put his hands to his chest and held them there with a pretty sigh. Fletcher was so amazed at what he had seen, going over it all in his mind, that he was disregarding his brother's inaction, at least for the moment, and Al took it upon himself to lovingly check his work._

_He smiled at the blue covering Russell, and then with a mousy grin, touched his palms against each other gently and tapped the star on either lapel. "Why don't we make you . . . a _Lieutenant-Colonel?"_he mused, drawing his fingers apart from the stars and dragging a second out of each previous one, stopping his fingers in the stars' new places._

_He stepped back and inspected the uniform, something on his face from the alchemy he had done; something like . . . a closeness to someone that was too long in returning. Catching the change, Fletcher suddenly broke out of his own delirium and turned to his brother, who now looked more like Edward then he had ever imagined he could._

_"Russell! Aren't they going to shoot you for impersonating an officer like that?"_

"_Mm?" came his detached mumble as he dreamily tipped his head._

"_They might," Alphonse admitted as he gathered the newly-grown strands of light blond hair together for inspection. He was quite happy about how he had managed to take some of the color proteins and use them to elongate the strands, so that they almost matched _Ed's_ new hair color, and seven years' worth of growth energy hadn't had to come out of Russell's head in three seconds. He pooled it in his palm, feeling the weight and consistency as he looked at Russell's state of recovery from said process. He would be around in a minute, even if he _had _just dropped to the ground like a ragdoll. "But they won't."_

"_Are you . . . sure. . . ?" Fletcher wondered with a bitten lip, obviously torn over asking such a distrusting question from someone he admired, and troubling over the safety and state of his brother._

"_I am sure," Alphonse offered easily, reaching behind Russell's head to tie the hair into a ponytail. "And I won't let it happen, anyway." Russell was being mindless, so he had to press his head down a little to get around to the back of it. "Brother wouldn't want that." He frowned as he had some trouble with Russell's hair. "You're hair's a lot coarser than his, too. . . . Bit troublesome. Might have to thin it out a little. . . ."_

_It was as another alchemic tingle shot over his scalp and about a third of his hair suddenly disentangled from his head that Russell sharply woke up. _

* * *

Russell bit his lip as he looked carefully over the tower's railing, trying to not recall everything he'd ever heard about not trusting snakes. He wanted to help, yeah, but . . . As he looked down at the swelling, sursurating mass of blue uniforms gathered below him, he felt afraid for his life. Afraid enough to say something about it.

Not to mention that he had let Fletcher into the arms of "the enemy," and Fletcher might die away from him. . . . They could both die, and the other would never know. The thought threatened to scare him out of his mind.

So when Alphonse reappeared from the dark steps to the top of the bell tower, Russell quickly turned to face him. "You don't think they're going to open-fire on us, do you?"

Alphonse strode past him sharply at the panic in his voice, and leaned over the railing to peer at the crowd below. He re-espied some prominent officers, then checked some of the more edgy recruits, and eventually decided they were all going to stay back if they didn't want to fire. There would be no screw-ups with the people down there, he smirked. Too many civilians had demanded otherwise: it would be _far _too hard for the military brass to cover up a preemptive execution. Especially with all the civilians standing just behind the army in the steet.

"No . . . ," he decided as his fingers flexed and his gaunt eyes narrowed like a hawk's. "I won't let them, anyway. That's not why we're here."

With a nonchalant yawn, Al moved off from the stone bricks and sat down in the middle of the floor. "Anyway, we've got other things to do. Come here."

Russell, wanting for any distraction, quickly followed as Alphonse sat on the middle of the floor. "What are we going to do?" he asked as he crouched.

Alphonse flipped out a deck of playing cards from his pocket and he settled in against the cement. "Wait."

* * *

Russell's eyes went wide. "What?! What are you talking about, just _'Wait!?_"

Alphonse shrugged and pulled Russell down. "We don't want to upset them," he cautioned pleasantly. "If we look like we're doing something, they might storm the place." He dealt Russell seven cards, then himself, and then laid the rest out in a pile. "Besides, we're just a distraction. But as it is right now, they're keeping a fairly good distance from the tower. Also, I've rigged it so that we'll know if anyone tries to get through the doors, where there's a blind spot from up here. Though," he laid a pair of cards down to the side. "You don't want to die today, do you?"

Russell was silent as he stared down the dark steps. "Are you sure. . . ."

Al nodded. "I don't know how long I'll be able to be with you—depends on how long the Fuhrer takes to get up here, how long my brother takes—and it will undoubtedly hurt when they try to come get you. But I would suggest staying up here, just lying on the floor, when they try to storm the place. Unless, of course, you're too much of a scaredy-cat. . . ." He smiled devilishly, but then his gaze turned up toward the ceiling, thoughtful. "Or they threaten to blow up the place. _Then_ you might wanna try surrendering, if you haven't evacuated along the passage by then; I guarantee you they don't know about _that,_ by and large, and by the time Mustang gets here—_if_ he doesn't get hopelessly lost in that maze—I will take care of him. I know you can _run_, at least; he's not a very wide man, he's easy to block." He scoffed, and waved his hand. "Then you can shed those clothes, cut that beautiful hair, and be on your way without another care in the world! Got any threes?"

Russell's mouth was agape for a second, before he sighed in apprehensive defeat and picked up his cards. "What's that _mean,_ 'you're going to leave me?' All alone to this? _You _may think you can handle three thousand men with heavy guns, but _I_ sure can't! There must be—" He stopped suddenly, and his eyes turned up to Alphonse's. "You don't mean you're going to go get yourself _killed _for this, _do you! _And then not _tell _me anything!"

"Your concern is so touching," Al sneered. But then he smiled. "Everything is taken care of, Russell. We've planned this for _far_ too long to let it go astray." His brown eyes searched Russell's for a moment; he was letting Russell see the truth in them for the first time. Then he fluidly shrugged and went back to his playing hand. "And I wouldn't say that I will _die, _necessarily, but it's all up to Brother what happens to me--I don't have a say in the matter. I'm simply here to help, and that's what we're doing, isn't it?" He picked out a card from the pile. "We only have until the end of today to get this done, anyway, and that's the only way I'm going to let it be. There are more important things going on here than just me."

Russell leaned forward with a harsh frown. "Why don't you just tell me what's going on here, huh? You can't just die on your own, dragging me into this, you know! I won't stand for it, especially from you, someone's younger brother! I can hardly let you die on Edward out here, and you can't expect me to let Edward die, either! I assume you're not going to kill anyone else, but _what_ the_ hell _is it that you two're doing!"

For a moment, Russell expected this new Alphonse to snap something and smack him, drag him down, and go on some righteous tirade as he tied him up and forced him to do what he wanted, but Al's face twitched into a thoughtful frown, and he put his elbow on his knee and his chin on his folded fingers, staring at Russell intently until he finally stood up with a pensive sigh.

"I can't say much," he said, "and I wouldn't if I could." As he clasped his hands behind his back, he looked out to the edge of the sky, and when he turned his top half back down to Russell, uniform swaying slightly in the breeze, he looked truly powerful. "But as to whether or not you're doing right or wrong, do not worry about that _a bit." _He smiled sadly. "We're only a distraction so that brother can have his wish, after all these years." He turned back to the ledge, leaning his hands on it heavily as he looked out among the night-shrouded city like he was in the sweetest dream. "There's nothing wrong with helping people, is there? Especially ones that have suffered for so long?"

Russell frowned, and turned back to the pile of cards, eyes drawn to the grains in the cement floor. "I guess not. . . ."

Al leaned forward on his hands and watched the stars in the dark above him. There were very few that he could see in the flood lights accosting from below him; so very, very different from the countryside, the cemetery. It was fitting, he supposed: When alone, surrounded by lifeless things, he could see millions of stars twinkling across the scattered sky; but when surrounded by thousands of human lives, each a sphere of influence dancing around on the earth, the stars were gone. They fell down, here, at this tower.

With a small hum, his gaze descended from the heavens to the liquid carpet of the bluish-black city twinkling with thousands of house lights.

It could be the ocean, reflecting the sky he couldn't see.

Al detached from his quarter-arc window past the stone support post to the next viewing-arc "window." It put the pavilion and headquarters behind him to his left; in front of him and to his right, cutting the black parts of the city evenly in half, was the main street leading from the pavilion, clustered with yellow circles, gently waving in the rhythms of the night. Straight and wide, the road lead all the way to the horizon and was a bed of lights the entire way, citizens assembling together, each holding at least one candle, to paint each life they cherished into the black canvas underneath him.

_This is what I came to save,_ a voice in his head whispered.

"People of central city," he whispered to the masses, "How long we have suffered, wanting relief from the pain, uncertainty of loss?"

Russell looked over his shoulder, but was quiet.

"I was one of you, wasn't I?" Al continued. "But I was denied the ability to be part of you."

He never would have been able to be down there, a body with the support of all the others, holding his own candle or Ed's.

Al's eyebrows knitted together and his large hand slid over his mouth. The people down there, they had each other, and they knew it, now. The mind's healing, if it wasn't already over, would start.

But he wanted to lead it, to feel it in his hands—He would look down to the soldiers, militant over an imaginary threat, tense and afraid, and show them the deliverance they had for them. His voice would rise in pitch as he spread out his arms, and the masses would cheer and like a circus master, he could feel the pandemonium and direct it toward an end that would recognize the sacrifice, the salivation, and self-perpetuate ever after. But looking at this now. . . .

Al looked out again to Headquarters in the north, vibrant and white in the floodlights; to the sea of soldiers and citizens to the south; the place where the sun would rise in the east and to the cemetery miles away to the west, and back again. He put his elbows on the ledge and his chin in his hands.

With all this, what did have to say?

"My people," he mumbled idly, "look at this and tell me you don't want to live."

"What are you looking at?" Russell asked from his place on the floor at Alphonse's back.

"Something no one else will ever see," Al replied dreamily. "A moment that can only be preserved in the memory of someone who will not be here to remember it."

"Wait a minute—"

"Russell," Al said, closing his eyes, "tell Mustang I want a candlelight vigil."

"Wait. You—" He rose to his feet, but Alphonse motioned him back down.

"The world stops for no one, Russell," he warned. "But it takes only one man to start its revolutions."

"No—"

Al's hands came together and pressed into the stone collumn holding up the roof. Blue light skirted down it and across the floor; Russell couldn't jump fast enough to avoid it cutting off his escape and burning up his leg. He fell into the ground with the hardening light wrapping around his arms, and he was very, very glad, for within seconds, his hands were bound into the floor with manacles of stone.

Russell looked in horror from his arms to the man standing above him. "What—What is _this!_"

"You've served your purpose, Russell." Al tipped his head back. "And I don't want to put you in more danger."

"You think tying me up will put me in less danger!"

"It's ten 'till midnight. They're not going to wait any longer." He put a finger to his lips, and then turned on his heel to the ledge, looking down at the blue-clad ocean again.

_And Mustang must have followed the trail I left him by now._

He bit his lips and swayed a little as he surveyed the troops once again, adopting a dancing smile. There were enough troops here that he knew none were actively out following Ed. His brother would know he had done a transmutation—he, after all, took the energy to do so from Ed's soul—and he would know that he should hurry. He wasn't sure why Ed hadn't done his work yet, but maybe he just wanted to wait until the last second like he was prone to do. He sighed and relished the finality of it, leaving Russell to deal with himself, until he finally found the people in the audience he was waiting for.

"Russell," he breathed, not turning back from his ledge.

The blond stiffened, probably afraid he was caught escaping. "What?"

"Armstrong and the other alchemists are back." He smiled devilishly. "Your brother did a very good job, and is probably not dead."

He raised his eyebrows in lieu of a wink and jumped up to the top of the ledge, holding on to the support column. "Hi Mr. Armstrong!" He waved jovially, leaning out into space and yelling down to the man. "Nice night, don't you think?"

As he watched Alphonse's back, himself quietly squirming for chalk, Russell realized the hand Alphonse had against the support post was actually _digging_ an array into the stone. Russell stared, not sure what to do.

"Come down, Alphonse! Edward! Surrender before we have to kill you!"

"Ever thought we were just trying to _help?"_ Al asked, as if wounded. He loved how the acoustics of this place, the quiet night, let him be heard if he yelled loud enough.

"I'm sure there can be no malice done by hearts like yours," Armstrong's manic voice reverberated up, "but you must come down and clue us in first!"

Al laughed and shook his head as a wide swath of pink appeared in the small circle of other alchemist surrounding Armstrong. Al ran his free hand through his hair as the other tapped against the array he'd drawn, and lit it blue.

"Hey! What—" Russell suddenly yelped behind him, his cry suddenly cut off when the youth realized he was melting into the floor. He tried to swim out of the liquefying cement for a second, until he realized he was sinking faster. "Al—! Stop—!"

But then Alphonse disappeared from his sight all together, and Russell, ready to be buried in concrete, felt his legs dangle. Then, in the most frightening moment of his life, his whole body dropped through. His arms were still above his head though; he looked up, and found the shackles about his wrists were growing chains from the ceiling. With a strangled gasp, he fixed his eyes on the ceiling, not the one-hundred-foot-below floor, and prayed for many, many things.

"Won't you come down, Alphonse? Edward? There's still a chance to talk this out!"

Al overemphasized shaking his head as he leaned out into the air. "And what are you gonna give me if I do!" he called back down as a resounding No.

"Life, boys! We'll get things arranged so you'll feel better!"

_Yeah, arranged on a lobotomy table. _"I'm twenty-three, old man!"

"That can be arranged too!"

Al groaned and shook his head. From beside Armstrong, a general stepped in front of him with a megaphone. "You have ten seconds to decide if you're going to give up or else the Colonel here will break that tower down with you in it."

Al raised an approving eyebrow, but then leaned down a little, keeping track of the snipers on the nearby buildings. He took a breath, and then yelled down: "You _could_ do that, but I put an array around this tower that will reflect any energies—_including _tank shells—and whatever you throw at me will be bounced back _right_ into those nice people back there, and then you'll have a nice happy insurrection on your hands, gentleman!"

The general looked like he was going to say something, but was effectively thrown for a loop. Al smiled a little, as he finished his transmutation with Russell and the generals below asked the alchemists immediately around them if such a things was possible. And of course, Armstrong's reply would be "Anything with the Elric Brothers is possible."

He supposed they would figure it out eventually, but it was all part of the plan. Jumping back into the tower, he checked his watch. "You have five minutes, gentlemen," he called to them. "I'll be out by then."

To tell the truth, Al rather hated bluffing. It was so uncertain in the end, but you did what had to be done. Humming a little tune, he ducked down below the ledge to be out of view and then moved over to the stairs. Down at the bottom, Mustang hadn't yet appeared.

Oh, lucky him.

* * *

After checking to make sure it was safe, at the bottom of the tower Al found Russell staring at him in a mix of obstinate fury and fear.

Al supposed the restraints pinning him to the wall helped.

"What the fuck, Al. What the _fuck _is this."

"You can't run away," Al shrugged innocently. He checked back over his shoulder toward the concealed underground tunnel entrance they had come through, which made an isoscolese triangle with the landing of the winding stairs and the thick steel front door, which Russell was just to the right of. "Someone's gotta know what happened."

"Oh fuck that, Al. You think me being defenseless is actually going to cause them to _not_ shoot me?"

"Shh," Alphonse answered, clapping his hands and coming toward him with a winded smile and an outstretched hand. Russell futilely tried to avoid the gloved hand, but Al caught Russell's head and ran a spark of blue across his blond locks.

Russell's body jerked, and after an instant of wonderfully surging power suffocating his nervous system, he loosened: weight on his head suddenly dropped off, and as he drooped forward, he found a large puddle of light blond hair scattered around his feet. He looked down at his body, in time to see the military uniform split in half and shuffle to the floor as well, leaving his clothes of the last two days exposed. Quietly, both piles on the floor suddenly burned with small flames, disintegrating into ash.

After a second, Russell's mind came back and he looked back up. "What are you doing," he asked, shaking his head. "You aren't sacrificing me to the wolves, are you?"

"Hell no!" Alphonse laughed. "On the contrary, my dear Russell! Pretending you were under my threat the entire time is the best way to keep you from getting shot. Make something up to this effect; it's not much different from the truth now, is it? Especially since you're gonna meet Mustang in that tunnel if I let you go now." He pointed to the other side of the small door hidden in the wall. "Don't get shot, that's the plan. Just a few more minutes, that's all we need."

"But Al!" he protested. "Come through the tunnel _with _me. There's no way to know that he knows how to get here."

Al shook his head. "If either of us get out in that mob, we're done for." Russell's mouth gaped as he watched Al moved away from him, under the winding stairs. "I'm sorry, Russell, but I have to stay here," Alphonse said from the shadow under the stairs, pulling up a wooden door in the floor that it was too dark to see.

A coldness dripped over Russell's body and froze him in place. "What are you going to do."

"If we'd had enough time, I'd take him and have you run, but if I sent you now, you'd just get you shot. If you're affixed to the wall, he won't have time to deal with getting you free, or need to restrain you." He smiled, looking down at the hole he had opened.

"I'm going to go play the final hand, with Mustang."

Russell narrowed his eyes and licked his lips, slowly. "That isn't Ed's contrivance, _is _it?"

"It's entirely Ed's contrivance," Al huffed. "But I added something _extra._ If you get a chance, ask Mustang what color the card he got was."

To Russell's confusion, his smile turned sad. "No," he sighed. "Little brothers . . . always disobey at the worst possible moment, don't they?" He laughed, a hollow thing. "No, Russell Tringham, _this_ vengeance isn't something of Ed's doing. He wouldn't want to confront Mustang. But then, there's something Ed doesn't _know, _either." He strode over to Russell suddenly and leaned over him, his elbow on the wall. The tone of his voice followed the look on his face, transforming from a mix of solemn sorrow to straight venom. "No, this is all _mine."_

He touched his palms together, and placed them against Russell's right hand. Heat burned into his skin in the vague shape of a circle. "Hey-hey, what are you doing!"

"If you still have your arm later, don't say I never gave you anything."

"What—!"

But he ignored Russell; keeping him in an iron grip, he turned to the tunnel in the wall: "Hey _Mustang_, come _get_ me, I've got something for you to _see!"_

As Al's voice was still ringing in the small tower chamber, he bent over and fully encompassed Russell. A massive roar erupted over them; the ground shook and it felt as though something massive shoved into the middle half of the bell tower. In the deafening pandemonium, Russell looked up, and saw everything but the nearest twenty feet of the stone cylinder toppling over and falling behind the far wall.

Unable to breathe, Russell stared with eyes as wide as dinner plates. While he was occupied, he completely missed Al's hand slipping into his pocket.

When he caught his breath, Alphonse lifted off of him just a little, looked up at the night sky, and chuckled in amazement. "Ha! I guess the government's gotten a little more expedient under Colonel Mustang, hasn't it? Shoulda left him out a little while longer!" He chuckled hastily and detached from Russell, who was still stunned and firmly stuck to the wall. "Well, anyway, this is where I leave you. You've been a great help Russell, and your brother too. Good luck."

He gave Russell a fleeting formal bow, and hurried over to the trap in the floor.

Russell struggled against the bonds. "How could you do this, just for _revenge, Alphonse Elric_!"

Alphonse smiled, and saluted him. "Survive and persevere. Much obliged." And then he disappeared into the black hole underneath the ancient stairs. "Don't forget me!"

"What?_ Alphonse!_"

Russell sucked in a breath, and pulled against the restraints. He couldn't see anything on his hand, but he didn't have time to worry about it. His heart was pounding; part of the building creaked, and as a chunk crumbled and smacked into what remained of the stairs, he was reunited with the idea that _a ten story building had just fallen on top of him._ As he stared blankly at the newly-uncovered sky, listening to his ragged breathing and fully aware of just how much he may have been used in all of this, he heard two footsteps, and then felt something round and hard press into the side of his skull. A moment later, a hard pull back on the hammer made his stomach lurch.


	9. Chapter 8 part 2

_Memorial ch 8, part 2_

_Warnings for violence, cursing, and questionable use of characters. Oh yeah, and biting. Oo; Watch out for that one.  
_

* * *

"Works better under Colonel Mustang!" growled the voice in his ear. "The insolence of them both!" Russell's eyes flicked over, but the gun was very, very much there, as were the black eyes burning with hatred beyond it. Why, only now, could he not hear the sound of the soldiers outside? They must be waiting for him to appear. They weren't going to come in, and right now he would have liked to have his chances with _them._ "Tell me or die: Where does that go."

Russell's mouth worked without a sound. All that came to his mind was how much he was shaking.

"_Tell me, _Russell Tringham_!"_ Mustang yelled, face murderous. He moved the gun tip to Russell's neck. "Or I make this as painful as I can for you—"

"I–! I don't know what's down there, really. . . !"

Mustang held him there, face an inch from his, breathing down his neck and radiating heat onto him. The dark-haired man tried to speak; his mouth gaped in rage numerous times. Finally, he shoved away from Russell to the sounds of the tower's iron doors melting.

"I hope Armstrong _shoots_ you," he snarled, and then snapped a fireball into the hole in the floor.

In a plume of red to his front and a flare of white to his side, Russell watched the rest of the tower come crumbling down.

"What are you going to do?" Russell asked quietly from behind him.

"Kill him if he resists." Mustang's back did not change, and as the molten orange fireball evaporated, he snapped another. And another on top of that, a fourth and fifth. "As for myself. . . ," Russell winced at the sound of each igniting below them; suddenly, Mustang stopped, his fist raised in the air mid-strike. "I would have shot myself a long time ago if this country hadn't needed someone to lead it." He looked back at Russell, over his shoulder. "What hurt the most was that I was never able to say goodbye. And that is what I'm doing now."

Then he snapped again, but turned his head back to Russell, black eyes depthless in the raging orange backlight. "Will you remember that if I die?"

"Sure. . . ?" he heard himself saying. Seriously, these people were all nuts.

"And what about you?" Mustang asked quietly, as he melted more and more of the area underneath them. "What is it that you regret the most about the rebellion?"

Russell paused, his eyes floating from the man's square shoulders up to the starry sky, there like it had been every night. Had the floodlights been knocked out too?

"The fact that I wasn't there at all."

"And your brother?"

". . . How do you know about him?" Russell looked to the outside door, but it had yet to be breached. It was like they were waiting for something.

"Files," Mustang answered, sounding exhausted as he snapped away. "Always files."

Four more snaps in rapid succession. Russell recoiled, but searched for something, anything, to keep himself talking and therefore alive. "I really dunno. . . . He's younger than me, but he was the one that always dragged me here. . . . He lost his idol, the man who could do anything. Who could inspire the power in ourselves just by being there. . . ." He looked at the pluming pit with a twisted stomach. "The two of them were the people's hope. . . . And our friends. Please don't kill him." ..If he's not already dead, anyway. Russell stared down at the hole filled with burgeoning, clouding light, not thinking entirely straight. He recognized that he should say it anyway, just in case.

Roy tipped his head up for a moment, pondering something. "I see," he said eventually. He nodded. "I have so much to say, and yet suddenly, there's no time for regrets if I want to live." He tipped his head, and another ground-shaking plume went off. "Strange, how I've had six years of wanting no more grief and suddenly all I can think about is getting more."

"Maybe you never had the right person to tell?"

"Maybe you're right." As much as Russell tried to imagine the opposite, there was nothing but futility in his Fuhrer's voice. "Do you think that the regret of missed opportunities can smother the soul? Be too much to bare?"

"Yes," he said instantly.

Mustang smiled slightly, even though he sighed. "Good."

"Why?" Russell asked back.

"Because I know I'm not alone."

Russell shook his head. "It was never about being alone."

"I know you were their friend, Russell. I'm sorry, but you're probably going to hear all this."

"Hey wait—"

"What?" He looked back at Russell.

"He wanted me to ask you something: 'What color was the note?'

Mustang's brow furrowed, and then his eyes flew open, images flashing through his mind: The note, the arrays, his shirt. All red and equally unsigned, aside from their handwriting and fervor. . . . And there was only one brother that had _ever _had legible handwriting.

"It was Al all along," Roy whispered. He stared up at Russell. Ed and Alphonse looked remarkably alike, as well, if they simply changed their haircolor. "Was Ed ever actually here?"

"Wait, what—? Hey!"

Mustang dropped into the floor without a word. Russell gaped after him, speechless, but nothing came from the black hole in the ground. A moment, and then two, and then very faintly, voices and gunshots floated up to him.

Sagging, Russell closed his eyes. He tipped his head back against the cold stone wall, and waited for the soldiers to come.

* * *

As the burning flames dispersed below him, Mustang dove down the dark, rough-hewn stairs, holding his back to the near wall and his handgun high. But as the dark smoke cleared and he made his way into the murky depths, three long, short, round walls appeared, one in front and two at angles behind. And on the few steps leading up to the nearest one, was a figure with his back draped across the stairs, with his arms spread out across the ledge.

Roy raised his gun.

"Still alive after all of that. What sort of monster did you turn into, Al?"

"Well hello there, Mustang. Nice to see you too." Alphonse tipped his head to the side with a smile, and motioned to the concrete he leaned on. "These_ are_ water tanks."

"You're not wet."

Al stared at him for a second, then shook his head. "I _can_ do alchemy, you know?" He raised his palms up in a shrug.

"Like I'd buy that," Roy spat. Al opened his mouth to say something, but Roy cut him off. "Where'd you get that uniform?"

Al checked him up and down with cool eyes and tossed his head. "Wanna take a guess?"

Just as Mustang bristled, Al held up his hand, though it was a small motion. "Would you like to know why I brought you down here?"

"Is there a reason I should let you speak rather than just shoot you?"

Al smiled. "I know you want to know before you _die_ why this is happening to you."

His voice was sweet, sickly calm in the dark illuminated by a few candles around the walls, caught fire by his attack. Al's body was absolutely still; Mustang wondered if he was even breathing. Still, it made looking down his sight all that more easy, though he could barely see what he was looking at.

Mustang set his stance. He couldn't very well kill a man who had no weapon and no apparent desire to attack him, but this really wasn't one of those circumstances where he could take that chance. Never mind the fact that it was someone he kept getting flashes of memory of, someone his brain was saying "protect." He narrowed his eyes. He couldn't get information from graves. "Fine," he answered tersely. "Talk."

"Do you remember a night during the rebellion, when I was gone? And then when I returned the next night, I was in pretty bad shape? Spitting up blood?"

"An understatement." Mustang offered to placate him, trying not to envision what the corpse would look like if he shot him between the eyes. "I remember that was when we figured out you were sneaking out on us and endangering our positions for your own gain."

"One of those nights," he agreed, ignoring the slight, "I was coming through the tunnels that connect half the city to this place and Headquarter's dungeons, and they found me. And you know why there are tunnels here? Why they found me?" So long as he himself made no move, Mustang figured Al would keep talking, and he did. Al gestured to the round basins at his back, including the one he was leaning on. "It's because this is an old reservoir for the city, from hundreds of years ago. The tunnels were channels that were used to check on the various underground pools and springs, so they crisscross all over the city. And the rebels were dumping red water into the water supply." He looked back at Mustang, frowning, his head cocked. "Three small tanks on the surface . . . but they feed into the rest of the city. . . . Did you ever even _know_ that?"

That would mean— For the first time, Mustang's countenance faltered. He quickly repaired it, but there was a nagging feeling in his chest that remained, and it refused to be ignored. What was worse, it was diverting his attention, and badly.

Al collapsed back against the tank's shallow concrete wall again and crossed his legs. Even though his arms stretched out along its lip, he gestured slightly with his hands. He sighed and tipped his head back. "I hate this tower. This was where I watched Ed from, every night. I'm so glad it's gone." His shook his head. "I tried to stop them, but, well . . . I barely survived, as you know." He sighed. "We all had things we wanted to accomplish back then, people we wanted to save. . . . But _I_ . . . I failed everybody."

Roy grunted, and took a step forward. "Is that it? I guess even fake humans know how to tell a story."

To his surprise, Al threw his head back and laughed. "You think_ that's_ what's going on here? Haha ha ha, no." His right hand dropped, and before he could react, Roy found himself staring down a black, metal barrel. "Now, if that's what you _really _thought, you wouldn't have that gun up like a _shield._ It would be your _fingers._" He laughed.

Mustang stayed still, trying to recompose himself despite the fact that he could have just died. It was too fast. It wasn't right. He steadied his breath, and his voice, thank god, was strong. "I can shoot you in the head just as dead as any alchemy can do, creation or not."

"You know," Al grumbled, pushing to his feet, "Maes had the very same idea and I didn't _appreciate _it very much."

Roy held his ground. "You know I can kill you before you can use that thing."

"But you don't really want to _do_ that, do you?" His voice lowered. "Your bleeding heart never wanted to see us hurt, and you have _nightmares _about it coming from your own hand. What are you going to do if you _finally_ have that on your conscience? Oh wait—you already do." He ticked one shoulder. "You're never going to use that thing. If I break you down right, I bet you'll _even _let me kill you. . . ."

"All we'd ever done was to save you," Roy hissed, ignoring the fact that maybe Al's words were entirely too true. "I have a country to save, so even if I _had_ cared that I couldn't save Ed—that I had let him slip through my fingers—I can't now. Just the way you let Riza slip through my fingers. . . . One for one. . . ." He narrowed his eyes. "I guess we're even now."

"Oh you _think _so?" Al growled. "You took _everything _from me. And I haven't come _close _to doing the same to you!"

"_What are you talking about, Al."_ Like talking it out would work, but it might buy him time. He took a step back, one for one as Al moved. Damn, he could barely see him.

"_I'm_ the one still alive! Why did you fixate on _Ed _this whole time?" Al stopped, stance unwavering. He seethed. "Don't you see there are other people of value around here too!"

The note. Roy's eyes narrowed. _Never forget_. Transmutation circles, poems, blood dripping over his hands to make the words. "It _was _you, this whole time_--"_

Al's cold smile sliced across his face. _"Yes. I'm_ the only one that wants vengeance. Ed's only regret was that he wasn't able to save the day, and that's what he's doing now. You were too blind to notice who you needed to watch out for, and it's vengeance against you and only _you_. Poor little Mustang, everyone will be saved and you will be the only one that dies, because _I _want you to." His laughing voice dropped into scorn. "Such a pity."

Roy stared at him. He was readying a plan of attack, but to snap with his left hand would, in a split second, disable his shooting. "But_ why?"_

"All this stuff you did," Al gestured with one hand, "was so drowned in misery. And yet you never even looked at the real problems. With enough sunshine and puppies and kitties you can bring people back to life in your memories and your heart, find a reason to live, but that was the _last_ thing you did," he sneered. "All these monuments and remembrances were merely grief upon grief, wounds upon wounds, a hypocritical ideal you didn't live up to! Why didn't you ever acknowledge there are people still _alive?"_

"Sounds like a hissy fit to me." Mustang tipped his head down his gun's sight, and his hands were growing more steady. A little more time, get him a little more riled, and Mustang would have his chance. "A child playing with people's lives, thinking he has power over them."

"No, Roy. I told you that I'd take care of everything I could, and you robbed me of that chance, just like my brother. And because neither of us were there, the people of this city can do nothing but suffer. Consider this a coup."

"I'm _still _listening, Alphonse, if you feel neglected. I'll take responsibility for being a bad parental figure to you and even to this country. But wasn't terrorism what we were fighting _against_ when this all started?" His hands were starting to shake again. "You can take my life, go ahead, but only when you can come back and prove to me that you're not missing half your mind."

"You still think I'm some twisted alchemical version of myself, don't you? Only a fool would believe in evidence he can't see." He snorted. "I am _very_ much real, Mustang. Fake things can't have complex emotions like this, and what's more, they can't do alchemy or have memories from before they were created unless someone inserted them. But's that_ not _the point!" He threw his free hand down. "You failed my brother and the future. After the rebellion, I was betrayed down here _again_, this very _spot,_and_ you _did it. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? The reason all this started? It's all because of _you,_and I can never forgive you. You failed us _all._ You_ caused_ this mess! Accept your punishment and just _die!_"

"I can't do that Alphonse!"

"_Yes you can!" _Al yelled. "You only got that position because you were unable to save the people that meant something to you!"

For one second, Roy shuddered; he closed his eyes. A red note, a red coat, flowers, graves, his wife, his friends, his men, the boys filled with life and immediately encroaching end . . . All flashed through his mind's eye and he couldn't shut it out.

"I_ hate_ you, Mustang." Al said, suddenly returning Roy to the world in front of him. Al was crying, and his voice, suddenly very young-sounding, was shaking. "You robbed me of my chance to save my brother, and without anyone ever knowing my story, now you want everyone to forget that any tragedy even happened? When you think of the rebellion, you don't think of what you caused to happen down here, _do_ you?"

Mustang's chance slipped away as he realized he had no idea what Alphonse was talking about. As time slowed, he tried to piece it all together.

Al's scowl hardened. "That soldier you sent to follow me," he clarified slowly, "he never came _back, did _he?"

Images hit him so fast that he lost sight of what was in front of him; a hospital room swirled around him, and his hands loosened around the gun. Things he hadn't thought about for years: A soldier he told to watch Alphonse, the look Al had in his eyes when he left that white room; it had been the last time he had seen him—

Roy's mouth fell open. "You didn't—"

"I'd forgive you if you just apologized! But you had the audacity to think I would fail at saving him, just like _you_ did, and you robbed me of my chance to even _try!"_

"You were trying to _resurrect_ your brother!" Roy shot back. "And look what it's done! What did you expect me to _do?"_

"Don't give me that!" he snapped. "This all happened because you interfered! I was brought to life and now have to _die_ because you caused this mess that brought me to exist!"

The look on his face as he grabbed his head stunned Mustang so completely that for a moment, he forgot about the weapons entirely; his own even dropped by degrees. And then Al growled; his arm raised in a blur and Roy was no match for it. A_ crack _reverberated around the walls, and then Mustang jerked. He was suddenly on the ground.

By the time he realized what was happening, Al was standing over him, narrowing his eyes. "So are you going to apologize now, and let my spirit rest in peace Fuhrer, _Sir?"_He pulled back the safety again and aimed. "Can you forgive yourself, even as you're about to _die?"_

Judging by the look that crossed his face, Al figured that he had. He planted his foot on Roy's chest and fired six more times.

* * *

When the smoke cleared off his gun, Al sighed, tossed it across the room, and then collapsed against the concrete stairs of the reservoir tank he had been sitting on before. So he was still here. . . . He had accomplished his last wish in time.

"Ah, I feel better now," he breathed, tipping his head back and staring at the gently rippling water's reflection on the ceiling. "How 'bout you?"

Roy didn't speak for a long time. He twitched on the floor, his brain reconnecting itself. Very quietly, when he started to breathe again, Roy realized that he wasn't quite sure where he was hurting. Or where he was bleeding from.

His hands ran over his stomach, his chest, and down part of his legs as he sat straight up. He stared straight ahead, and then turned to Al. "You didn't hit me—"

"Now think how close I was to you and ask if it was intentional_,"_Al drawled. He was smiling, a wry and amused look.

Roy stared. "You weren't . . . ever going to kill me?"

"I can't say that." Al got to his feet and dusted off his gloved hands as he made for the exit stairs. "Thank you for being my diversion. I got to say my peace, but Ed needs me now. . . . Maybe I can die in peace."

He sighed, tipped his head up, and _smiled._

Pretty soon, he wasn't going to have to look at the remnants of this building and suffer.

"In that case," Roy announced behind him, raising his gun.

Al's strangled gasp was lost in the resounding shot. He fell against the wall, clutching his chest and rasping blood while his eyes went wide. "You shot me!"

"Yes." Roy rose to his feet, labored and haggard. "I may agree with what you're saying, but the real Alphonse Elric would never scorn 'kitties.' Also," he extended his arm to the fullest, the gun still trained, "You should have a lot more bruises."

Al groaned, and bent closer to the floor. He made wet rasping noises and coughs as he clutched his chest. He showed no signs of bouncing back. Roy eyed him suspiciously. "Common, I'm wide open, why don't you try again?"

He waited, even left himself farther open, but instead Al just shook. He started to wheeze. As a cold, sinking feeling was settling over Mustang, Al did his best to suck in a deep breath, and then hacked out as much fluid as he could. When he looked up, his fierce eyes shone in the flickering candlelight, along with dark blood slicked on his lips.

"People change, Mustang."

Roy stared at Al's right eye, the troughs and rises in the iris's pigments illuminated by the torch just over his head, lit by the many fireballs. Even though Al knew what Mustang was doing, he didn't flinch; he remained calculated, if shivering, and let him.

"Your eyes are brown. . . ." Mustang breathed.

"Same color as they always were." He smirked, though it came before a pained hack. "What, did you think they'd be something _else?"_

Al laughed, cold and bitter. "You are so stupid." He growled as he set his cold eyes on Mustang. "I _am _Alphonse, you idiot." He coughed, and for the first time, Mustang saw how far the red on his chest had spread. But when he surfaced from his sharp gasp for breath, his laugh was only more wicked.

"I have only _one _life, Mustang, and I am _tied _to them. I am _half_ of Al's _soul._ If you kill me, you kill _them!"_

He dove forward, and drove his red teeth into Mustang's leg.

* * *

Al bit his lip as he looked up to the statue covered in white cloth at the empty parade grounds. Everything was still; the night air was cool; and the floodlights around him buzzed the faintest bit while giving off the unnaturally bright light inside the white-stone courtyard, while the sky outside the walls was so absolutely dark. "You said three days," he said more to himself as the blond jumped up the covered statue's platform and grabbed a rope.

"Yes I did. And you know why?"

"Because you're a homunculus that's bent on the day it was created?"

His tugging on the rope knots stopped for just a second. "I'm not a homunculus," he said flatly, and then went back to work.

The bubbling anxiety in Alphonse's stomach twisted itself tighter. It refused to subside.

"Yes, you are."

The man glared in warning. "No, I'm not."

"Where's your ouroboros," Al said. "Let me see it."

"You can strip me naked but you won't find one," the impersonator of his brother sighed, annoyed. "In fact, I'd more or less look on_ you,_to find one." Al grumbled, then sighed, big and put-upon, and Ed simply untied more ropes. "You _know_ the story, Al. I don't see why you seem so bent upon not believing what you did yourself." He shrugged, grumbling. "But maybe that's the curse of all scientists who experiment with people's—"

"Hey," Al barked, dark and angry. "Back in LaFanté, You said three days. Why."

"_Because,"_ Ed sneered, patience lost. "I had to make my death relevant."

"_Death?"_Al asked. And then, even more confused: _"Relevant?_"

"I'm going to die, Al, to bring back everything everyone needs." He looked down, and Al stared up at him, petulant and troubled. "People are hurting, and I can heal them. When someone can do what no one else can, they have to do it." A wry smile tweaked at the edge of his mouth. _And the Stone has been given by now._ . . .

"And three days, because that is when my ghost is compelled to be here. The only time I am allowed to be here, the only time it would make any sense for me to come back. Now that I am completely formulated, I have this uncontrollable urge to do this, and do this_ now_."

He stopped for a second and stared at his hand, opening and closing it a few times. The veins were terribly shriveled and his skin almost clear. "It took six years, but that's life." He shrugged, and then went back to working.

"But why . . . why like _this?_ This whole ordeal, and now this? Certainly there's a better way?" Al asked from below, his small voice pained and sad.

"Because of what I was thinking when I lost you," he said with a clipped shrug.

"What was he thinking?" Al burst suddenly, shaking. "I want to know what my brother's regrets were. I already know he died in pain. . . ."

Ed tipped his head. "Hm?"

Al worked his hands helplessly, at a loss for words as he tried to keep the water from falling out of his eyes. "You're here . . . as his ghost, right? What was it, then, that he died thinkingof?"

". . . Why do you think he died?" Al just stared at him, pleading with his big eyes, shiny with tears. The blond sighed and considered the request, looking at the starry night sky off in the distance as he pondered. The trail end of his blond ponytail drifted gently on the quiet wind as he did so. "Well, the last thing he thought when he went asleep . . . was that there were people he had to save. And people, like you, he had to save from the pain of him leaving behind." He nodded. "There were several things, all at once, that he wanted to still accomplish, but I'd say that the last thing was, _'I wouldn't want to be left behind. I wouldn't want to do that to people.'_"

Al shook his head, wiping at his eyes, and was quiet for a while. He shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably in the cold March air.

The . . . _man's _tone fell quiet on his last words, and Al mimicked it when he spoke next. "Is there some reason," he asked, "that I have to lose my big brother twice?"

"You never lost him." Ed stopped tugging at the ropes and touched his chest. "He's _still _here. . . ." His gold eyes glittered, set on Al's brown ones. "And I know you want him back. You want that lost part of _you_ back, too."

Al _couldn't_ believe it. Nothing, nothing in their life had ever been this easy. Nothing they could accept. "You don't really want to live? I can't believe that—"

"Or you can't accept how you'll feel should I take action toward that end?" he shot back. "Look, Al, don't worry about it." His voice entirely mimicked his brother's now, the last time Al had heard the real one speak, nearly six years ago. "I have a plan. All you have to do is sit back and be the recipient of good deeds. You deserve it. The people deserve it."

"But—"

"Shh." He stopped his work and turned to Al, a draw rope in his hands. "Al, don't worry about me. I _am_ Ed, just as _you_ are also _me_. . . . I am nothing but a doll that has been animated, and trapped part of your souls, thanks to you." He stood in front of him, unassuming and blank, the rope in one hand. "I am a piece of you, and I want to go home."

Alphonse was silent. He ran his hand down his chin, and then nervously held his arm. "All I'm doing," Ed said, "is using my body until it breaks down, and I'm free of this prison."

Al tipped his head up, and shook his red face. "I don't _want _that—"

The thing that looked like Ed shrugged and then pulled on the rope, the white tarp flapping and loosening. Like in a dream, it fluttered down on all sides from the top of the statue.

The ceremony to close the holiday, to present this monument to the heroes of the revolt, would have been held today, but, along with so much else, it had been canceled. Al caught his breath as he watched the tribute they made while he was gone reveal itself: It was beautiful and majestic, reliefs of people and the darkness of the event transforming into lighter thoughts and hopeful images, but what captivated him most was the specific people, in each place, in it. From a mass of half-formed blackness and faces swirling violently at the left end, the carvings slowly building the entire story of the revolt via people who had died at different times; to the looks on their faces; to the power of their stances. . . . It was a amazing. The old Fuhrer was at the turning point, and toward the lighter end— The flow of the image and people lifted into the air, the stone actually lightened, and more pleasant things appeared. The half-formed demon/debris shapes following the men transformed into a flock of doves after the halfway point. Other things grew out of the "ground," interacted with a few soldiers that had died; there were relics, objects he recognized, and then—

"I don't believe it."

At the farthest end, was Mustang, leading a charge in an overly bloodied and ripped-up state, and himself, rising from his knees at the very forefront, in one hand pulling everything behind him in the statue forward, and in the other, desperately pushing the remnants of some kind of alchemic energy up toward the sky. A splintered, falling cross behind him, literally nearly twenty feet long, interwove into the etched background, as did the lines pouring from the energy (or up into it?) along with other debris and falling objects. The weight of what he was propelling seemed immense; every finely-detailed part of his body rippled with stress, and the look of pain, and hope, and _"almost there_—_!" _only furthered it. By the time Al looked for the rest of the statue, his mind was being swept along, a symphony of swelling sound building in his mind into a crash that would move the heavens, let alone him, a little man watching the spectacle.

Al followed the line of his doppleganger's hand, and up by the cross's crossbeam, over crumbling buildings and a disintegrating world (or was it being repaired?) in the background, was a line of half-sized angels, closely framing an opened window hanging in the sky. Double-pained and expansive, the alchemy from his hand was blowing it open. The angels were being barraged by the tremendous gale the power was making, and they all looked back over the statue, a range of emotions on their faces. Most of them looked down at Al however, holding their hands out, reaching out to pull him along, if he could just close that gap.

_The moment of ascension into heaven, _Al thought in amazement. _Showing our grief, our pain, and our hope for freedom.__ Our ability to._

He shivered a little, and looked to the tall blond behind him. "I'm touching _angels_," he swore.

"It's not inappropriate." Ed shrugged. "It's what everyone thinks of when they remember you, the many things you did. Including the falling of the crosses."

Al looked back to the white stone. He felt lighter; he did. _He _necessarily wouldn't feel triumphant, but capable, and motivated, he did. He traced over the detail of the city in rubble directly underneath the "window" with his eyes, finding two rows of children fading into life in the stone, more detailed and pronounced by the time the third full face came into being. The first few children looked around—one back, and sad; one forward with a look of surprise—and then the rest stared up, with rapt attention toward the window and the scene some ten or fifteen feet above them. But there were only a few children on this face: they wrapped around the base of the statue to the right, in a huddle. They looked out onto another tarp covering the ground. Al walked around to the front of the statue, and stopped dead in his tracks.

There was only one scene on this face. His brother kneeled in the middle of the cluster of children—wrapping around from the left side of this face of the statue and continuing to the right—a smile gracing his face, holding out his right hand. Behind him, etched into the flat face of the stone was the sun setting (or rising) on a far-reaching view of the Central countryside. Far above him was the other side of the window, nothing more than a plain outline in the stone, covered in carved ivy. The vines ran down the stone sides of the window to the physical ground, disappearing for a moment and then reappearing three-dimensionally again around the front of a few of the children, to frame them at their feet. Mirroring the sun in the background, the palm-sized flame medal Mustang had awarded Edward for his martyrdom hung about his neck, rising just out of the top of his shirt.

Ed was smiling, a particularly enlightening look. _This is what I give you_._ I want you to see it, what I saw. Not pain, but hope; the _power,_ for a beautiful tomorrow._

Al bit his lip, and looking down found such words carved at his feet, just in front of the ivy, at the edge of the slab that the statue sat on. He himself stood on a step one down, one of five leading up to this face. Eyes trailing the stairs, he came to look behind him. Off the ledge he stood on and a few feet below him there was a tarp, stretched over something vast, lumpy, and about three feet tall at its high points. It extended at least twenty feet in all directions from him. "What's under here?" he asked.

"A scale model of the city," Ed said. "As seen from the crosses."

"No way." Al's eyebrows furrowed at the prospect. "Really?"

The blond nodded. As Al's eyes swept over the ground, considering it, Ed moved off behind him, his voice steadily growing quieter as he walked. "It's really quite intriguing. They have a statuette of each person that died, walking around the streets like they were still alive. Doing their trades, talking to each other and laughing. Children are chasing each other around, doing other kid things. Some citizens are in the buildings, etched into the windows. But there are also figures of those that survived—soldiers, and civilians that they know fought. From where you are now, you can only see the living people. From the opposite, you can see only the dead, and some angels fluttering about the shadows of the buildings. And if you stand to either side, like where I am now, you see both, a mix of past and future." He came to a halt and put his hands on his thin hips, considering. Then he shook his head, and pointed toward Al's feet.

"Interestingly enough, the five or six people that were "rescued" from the pavilion the day the crosses came down are all sitting on the front steps of Central Command, their backs to the main statue. Only thing is . . . we're sitting next to each other, you and me. Elbow in elbow, leaning on each other, watching. Right in the center. The old Fuhrer's two stairs below us, too, actually."

"I'm there too?" Al's brow creased, and he turned to make sure Ed saw it. The man was moving again, this time off to the left side. He came to a stop next to another edifice, a large covered lump connecting to a circular wall about four feet high that ran in a half-circle around the majority of the plaza's area. "What does _that _mean, though?" Al had a feeling, but he couldn't really trust himself to think it.

Ed chuckled softly as he worked on another rope. "I think it means that Mustang was sorry." He shrugged. "And he didn't want to have to see each one of us alone. We both had to be in there, but what he was going to do? Split us up? Put us back to back? That'd be rather depressing, and I think he's trying to rewrite that one little thing, because that's the only way he could give us our happy ending."

Al stared. Ed laughed softly. He reached down and took hold of a buckle on the tarp next to him. "Now, I want to show you something else, if you think _that's_ cool."

The buckle flipped out of his hand and the cover peeled back; probably by some alchemy, the others all around the wall did as well, one by one. Al watched as they snapped back, revealing a wall of dark stone, etched with words. On the top of them, easily visible from the platform, were words, probably quotes. Al followed the circle around with his eyes until he hit the hundred-and-eighty-degree point from "Ed," directly to his right. The black wall ended abruptly at another statue, a statue that was _him._

Al looked back sharply at the image of his brother, who was leaning against a statue that looked quite a bit like him. Younger, but the blond man nonetheless. The living him had a wry smile across his face at the moment, and an amused glint in his eye. Al ignored it and went back to the statues. He jumped down from his place on the main monument and went to the free-standing statue of himself, about twice life size. He and Ed were directly across from each other with the monument and open space in between them, mirroring each other. They were kneeling—one knee up, one down—each with one hand pressing into the closest stone wall, and the other pressed into the ground. Both were situated on top of identical transmutation circles that were mostly-obscured by the statues above them, but that were there nonetheless.

Al tipped his head to see what one it was, and his mouth fell open. The one for the Philosopher's Stone—well, about half of it, thank God, but it was there. Mustang had seen it, when they did the transmutation, it was true, but still. . . . Tricky bastard, not only remembering it but putting it here—! Not only was it a testament to them, but a symbol of life, death, and everything. . . . Perseverance and trial, human spirit . . .— He looked up quickly. Of course. This whole thing was in a huge circle, as well.

Al surveyed the ring surrounding him. It was in six parts, three black wall arcs on the "north" or "upper" half, connected each by a short distance of clear pipes, probably that would have still water in them soon. The other half of the circle was a reverse mirror of that, with three troughs of water in the ground of equivalent arc-length to their counterparts on the south half of the grounds. They were broken by nothing but the stone of the ground, and Al wasn't sure if they were connected underground or not. Probably not, for the sake of avoiding setting off a transmutation.

The water troughs that touched the statues of them actually went under their hands, so there would probably be a small hidden jet there that made the pools ripple. At four points parallel to and probably only five feet out from the large circle were other water pits, which would mostly likely be silent. Words were around the closest one, and so, he'd assume, the others.

Al found himself nodding as he walked forward toward the wall, checking around his feet. When he got to the wall, he put his hand on the stone, warmed from the sun and still giving off heat deep into the night. A wall with the names of the dead, starting with adults and ending with children, including those that had subsequently died of the various things caused by red water (it was impossible for them to tell what it was from, he figured, but impossible to ignore that it started directly after the rebellion and the ailments were probably from a single source). The second wall held the names of the wounded but survived, and the third one . . . He ran his fingers over the words on the top of the warm stone, considering. Anyone who'd wrote in that they wanted their name in it, because they were still alive, physical unscarred, but still suffering unendingly from the rebellion?

Al smiled a little. Yes, that would do satisfactorily, wouldn't it? It was Mustang's style.

Three parts of wall, for the three days of the ceremony; with them, it was eight pieces of and eight breaks in the circle for the sixteen total crucifixion days. Add in the four other troughs, and that'd add up to the total number of days from the fighting until they were able to reestablish order and end the fighting.

And on the top of each wall, a saying visible from both the elevated view and next to it.

_So long as you go on, I have worth._

_So long as you remember me, I am here with you._

_So long as there is tomorrow, there will be something for us to drive toward._

And around the outside of the entire circle: _To a bright and beautiful future, I will always be watching over you._

Al smiled. The ambiguity of "I" was a wonderful touch. Under his feet, around the edge of the half of the human transmutation circle, rang the words: _Never stop searching. _He choked back a sudden flash of heat for a second, and, putting his hand over his mouth, wondered what Ed's said. What _everything_ else said. Al forced his hands to his sides and looked back to the blond man, who was still waiting for him and smiling.

"You put six lines in here and you have an array that would blow up half the city," Al called to him.

"I know; ironic isn't it?" Ed laughed. "He probably doesn't even know."

"So why did you bring me here?" Al demanded.

Ed tossed his head and uncrossed his arms. He stepped to the side, and motioned with wide arms to the statue he'd been obscuring.

Al cried softly and Ed's smile turned wicked.

Against the stone, tucked in the levels of the statue, was a body bathed in white. The floodlights and distance at first made the organic shapes hard to see, but the drape of the clothing and the unnaturally pale skin in just the right places made it obvious to Al who it was.

The tall blond untucked from the arms of the statue a man that was his twin, sickly thin and pale, dressed in loose white bed clothes and limp.

With a cry, Al ran to him and plucked his brother away, scooping him up as the man turned to let him do so with a dark but satisfied smile. Alphonse ducked under the weight, even though it was so much lighter than it should have been, but on his knees he cradled Edward's head and upper body in his arms. The tears that had been encroaching suddenly stung his eyes and burned against the cold as his vision swept over his brother's body, ensuring everything was in tact. For those six years, he had watched his brother's comatose body change without its owner knowing it, and for that time, the only thing Alphonse had wanted was to see it be the same when his brother woke up. But for this moment, all he wanted to see was the face that had been taken away from him, this frail and failing life that glowed before him in the night. That which was at once the chain smothering him and the thing he had the greatest hope for.

Finally, it was something that was real in all of this.

"Oh God, brother." Al pulled him close and sobbed into his luke-warm and unresponsive chest, clutching it tight.

The man standing beside him watched him with some surprise, and touched his shoulder. "Hey—"

"You—you told me," Alphonse began suddenly, turning to him, "when you came to our house and took Ed away . . ." He stopped, biting his lip and turning back down to Edward quickly, stroking a stray hair out of the way his face, just to make sure he was there. It seemed like a different life, it felt so long ago; just those six days, but . . . he still had to know if this new life would end, too.

He lowered his head, and then despondently looked back up at the man towering over him. He was watching him, strangely stoic, and blinking a few times while Al watched him. There was life in those eyes, there really was. It was just strangely detached.

Al's voice shook. "You told me to come after you abducted him, that there was nothing to fear because you were going to make 'a paradise from the war of six years ago. . . . For me and you and everyone,' but, but you just still had some things to do, and you needed us _all_ to finish this—" His swallowed hard, the memory harsh.

"Just what did you mean by that?" he finally whispered, tipping his head back like there was nothing left in the world for him to do. "Are you going to killus all?"

"Step into the circle and see," he answered softly, pointing behind him, at the base of the statue, the long side opposite the one Al had seen. He smiled, even while Al was watching him with more than a bit of terror. "Why would I tell you if I could just surprise you? But the time for happy reunions is later. We need to make sure we do this before the military co—"

He pitched forward, his face suddenly frozen. Ed sucked in air, and barely kept himself from crumpling to the ground. As Al stared, horrified, blood blossomed under where he grabbed his chest with a pale hand. _"Fuck!_ They—they didn't have to go and fucking _impale _him!" He cursed through gasping breaths, and heavily forced down a lump in his throat. Very quickly, he recalled his other half before he died completely and killed them both.

He cursed again and then curled up onto his side, his back turned to Alphonse. Al made to get to him, but the man quickly snarled with an unhealthy amount of fluid in his lungs and pointed to the stone platform the statue was situated on, blood blooming on his clothes. "Get _over _there," he growled, his hair dripping over his laboredly heaving shoulder, the liquid rumbling in the back of his throat.

There was a moment where Al stared at the blood dripping out the image-of-his-brother's teeth, but then he got to his feet and ran to where he had been pointed. The man stumbled over as well, holding his chest and looking like he was trying not to breathe. He dropped down on to the last level of white stone before the one Al was on and took a deep breath.

"I feel them coming," he muttered in a tiny whisper to himself before he put his hands together and pressed his palms into the stair. A second circle appeared under the blond, one that intertwined with the one below Alphonse and the man he enfolded in his arms.

"But . . . but I still don't _understand _what you're going to—! Al protested as the man forced his legs to work and brought himself to stand in the empty circle.

"A long time ago, we fought for something. And we gained it, for a few short days. And you know why it was paradise? Because there was no pain of burden, for a few _short,__ sweet _hours." He lifted his head, tipping it back, and chuckled as he watched the pair, the rasp all but drowned out by blood. "To regain paradise, we must first lift the chains the past." He shifted his weight. "Good luck, Alphonse. Make this city proud." He smiled like the Fullmetal Alchemist Al remembered. "I'm pretty sure this is gonna work."

"_Wait—!"_

He stomped on the circle before Al could move. He reached out, but a painful light had already engulfed everything.

* * *

_A/N: It took me a long time to write about that statue. Tell me what you think of it. :)  
_

_I also realize that it may seem even more so by now that a lot of stuff happens very randomly, but there actually is a reason for everything that happens to each character. It's explained in the next chapter, the last one before the epilogue. So hang in there! Just a little more, and then you'll know everything. ;D_


	10. Chapter 9: Day Three: Chains & Paradise

_Memorial Chapter 9_

_The last chapter before the epilogue. You've made it!_

_Warnings: Riza's personality is a stretch, I understand this. I'm not very satisfied with it, but take it at face value with her, and don't let it ruin the rest of the show. I promise, it'll be a fun bunch of fireworks. -pets Alphonse/"It"-  
_

* * *

"Wait—Havoc!" Riza bounded forward from the backseat and the man nearly swerved off the road. She pointed past the windshield. "That's . . . _alchemy!"_

And much to Havoc's surprise, there was a light that flared into the sky, faintly, to their left. It did not come from where soldiers were; nor the hospital to which they were going; but from beyond a few buildings at the parade grounds, no more than a few blocks away.

"Get me there now!" she demanded, and he was all too willing to obey.

_D: THE CHAINS OF PARADISE_

"_I'm only going to tell you this once. The man in LaFantae said that if you waited long enough, your brother's soul would return, right? Well, what do you think the soul's trying to do, now that it is here?"  
_

* * *

_ The hospital ward was burning in the orange light of sunset, from a window at the end of the white hall. The scorching sun reflected off the floor, the walls, and Al wondered if this was what the tunnel to heaven or hell looked like. He maneuvered around a smear of blood that had not yet been cleaned, and tried to put it, and the screams, out of his mind. With the thousands of patients the hospital had yet to see, there was no way they were going to have the manpower to clean it up for a week._

_No one noticed when he passed by several men on gurneys, going around a corner to the military's wing. Alphonse didn't even bother to knock when he came to the correct door; he simply slipped in with a hand pushing on the bubbled glass._

_Colonel Mustang's eyes were on him instantly. He was lying in a bed, hand draped over his stomach, and looking like he had been thinking about something complex. When his eyes caught Alphonse, his look didn't exactly improve; if anything, his frown of concentration became more tightly knit._

"_Alphonse," he greeted like a grandfather. "How are you holding up."_

"_I don't sleep anymore," Al said without thought, without emotion. He shrugged, and his gaze was dead._

"_He isn't going to wake up, is he," Roy said._

_Al's voice was detached and hollow. He stared at the ceiling as he replied, as though he—and it—were not really there. "I really don't think so."_

"_Are you going, then?" Mustang struggled up onto his elbow, watching Alphonse's fine, expressive features intently. He was still a wonder, a miracle, to watch. "Will this be good-bye?"_

_Al stared at the floor. "I have one thing left to do. Then I'll go."_

"_Home?" he asked, eyes dark, probing._

"_No." The answer was immediate, but unsure. "I don't think we can go back there."_

_Roy nodded and lay back down, though he didn't like it. Still, he found his throat dry when he tried to work up what may amount to his last words to Alphonse Elric. Ever._

"_Do you know where you'll go? When?"_

"_No, and no." He shrugged. "But soon, and far away."_

_Mustang watched the youth lay a pocket watch on the table next to his hospital bed, already adorned with vases and other small get-well gifts. Then, Al's hand touched Mustang's shoulder, slight as a ghost's. "Thank you," he offered, "for all you tried. Ed would want me to thank you."_

_Mustang grunted, turned his head away, and bit his lip. He tried to keep from crying at least until Al was out the door, but he didn't make it by a long shot._

"_Goodbye . . . Alphonse. . . ," he managed as the bronze-haired boy went to the door._

_Al turned back, hardly an emotion on his face. "'Bye."_

_He turned; Mustang frowned at his back. That look--Something wasn't right. "Wait, Al—" but the door had closed._

_Mustang's eyes opened wider. _What's this last thing you're going to do?

_Roy got to his feet faster than it would have taken to make Riza happy. Still biting back pain, he grabbed the nearest soldier guarding the hall, holding him with a grip so tight he even pulled the man to the ground as his feet gave out from under him._

"_Follow that man. If he tries to transmute anything, _stop_ him."  
_

* * *

_  
Inside the gray, stone tower he had become all too familiar with, there was a covered door. Hidden under the spiraling stairs cutting up through the cylinder, deep in the shadows where the only light came from one hundred feet up, was a wooden plank door in the floor. One quick pull of the black iron handle affixed to the rotting boards and the cover was lifted; the hinges squeaked in protest, and then Alphonse was descending, into a subterranean world he'd promised to return to._

_Little did he know of the other that was following him there._

_A few feet in to the cavernous room, he drew his brother from over his shoulder and laid him gently on the cold, wet floor, and after a quick squeeze on the shoulder, moved on for the moment._

_The enormous water tanks—circles of low concrete walls that sank into the waterline—hummed almost as if they were alive: the force of the moving water flowing from one place to another out of the collection tanks. This place, once forgotten, Al guessed now that he had time to reflect upon it, was almost abandoned as an outdated well system. But the huge vats were more connected to the new system than had been imagined, and now that much of the city's new water systems had been destroyed, this was one of the remaining taps that was being relied upon almost exclusively._

_He wondered how many people it had already infected, and it made him sick._

_He dipped his hand in the water—what more would it hurt?—and drank a little. Grainy, sticky, sweet. It was everywhere, even a little colorful. But by the time it got into the entire system, people could hardly tell._

_Al sighed and returned to his brother. He was still breathing unobtrusively, the only real sign that he was still alive. He was already becoming terribly pale, despite those days and days in the—_

_Al stared down at him, not making a noise. _Why.

_Alphonse marveled at himself--his brother's creation--as he went to work: his muscles, his bones, the fact that he could feel anything—and acutely, anything and everything his muscles did. It was all tender; every tiny stimulus, intense. It was a marvel he knew the cost of, that he could use his legs to bring their combined weights up the stairs; his bones to support upright standing and his nervous system to control his arms to bring Ed close to him; his heart, to feel the warmth between them and pump red blood cells through his limbs, to keep his every tiny cell alive—_

_He sighed and laid Edward out against the front tank's stairs. Ed's blond head, some of it void of hair from where they'd inspected the wound, rested in the water; the rest of him remained dry. Al would have put him completely in it, but Red Water chemicals probably didn't add to the buoyancy rate._

"_If I don't get rid of this, there are going to be a lot of children that never get a chance at what we had," he mustered the courage to say. It was still kind of like a dream, and he hesitated before putting his hands together._

"_All in one fell swoop, I can do this. . . ."_

_His palms connected._

"_Hands in the air! State what you're doing, now!"_

_The shout came from behind him, a voice he didn't know. Alphonse instantly turned to the stairs, and found a rifle trained on him._

"_I was told by the acting Fuhrer to stop you if you tried anything! Please step away."_

_The troop approached slowly, a man in his mid-twenties. Al couldn't make out much else in the light._

"_It's already started." He leaned his back against the ledge, though his hands stayed raised. The energy readying to work was burning his hands. "Please put that down."_

_The man readied. Al was surprised, but not really put off. He decided on a different course of action. "Fine. I surrender." He held his hands up and came toward the man, but wasn't able to conceal the blue light crackling between them. "There's nothing else I have to say to you," Al answered to the man's stunned petrification at the energy. He came closer, one step, another . . . Almost there—_

_Just as the man came back into awareness, Al grabbed the rifle's muzzle and pulled it across the soldier's body. Al's other arm hooked around the man's neck as he spun him around, and then he was in a sleeper hold. Al kept him there, one second, two, as he attacked Al's stomach, shins . . . and then the soldier slumped against him. Immediately, Al let go; it was not hard, now that his legs were bruised all to hell. He went to his knees, and gently propped the soldier against the wall._

"_Nothing to say," he repeated as he stood up, kicking the gun across the floor. "Except, maybe, 'Run.'"_

_Al walked back up the stairs to Ed and sat next to him. This would work. There was nothing else to say._

_He put his palms together, and then pressed them to Ed's chest._

_The energy surged through him, power from inside his ribcage that then broke out from him and into Ed, and into the water beyond. It fed off the chemicals, and grew exponentially stronger. He saw the water burbling around Ed's scalp and filling the wound in the artificial light; it wasn't Xing's healing alchemy, but it was what he knew. It would fix him. It would. And at the same time he would free the people from the prison they were going to have from his failure to stop the contamination of the water in the first place._

_The transmutation reached a fever pitch. Wind—purple, yellow, blue, pink—spiraled through the low-ceilinged room; it was all he could do to stay upright. As he braced, he heard a sound behind him that didn't fit in. A clattering, something human—_

_Al shut his eyes, and let it come, wishing that some divine providence would keep it from doing so. He hadn't been mean enough; he hadn't killed the guy—and this was what he got._

If you do this, we may _all_ die. I wonder. . . .

_A pain shoved into his back, between the spine and shoulder blade. Perhaps it was because of the alchemy, but the sensation was muted. He knew his body caved, and he couldn't breathe more than a thick rasp._

_Just as the low, hungry sound of the transmutation mutating to devour its host filled his ears, Al felt two luke-warm hands come up and close around his weakened own._

"Thank you."

_The second transmutation was more energy than he had felt in his life. The light enveloped him, and he knew nothing more than giving up his own transmutation and melding with it._

* * *

"_What you made that day was not a Sin. Due to the two transmutations fighting against each other, what ended up happening was separating your brother's soul from his body, along with part of yours, as well. Since you were using the red water to construct Ed's body anyway, a whole second body was created, a doll. The soul Ed was giving up to save you fled to this new body, instead of letting itself be caught by the powers that be, which would disintegrate it. Some of your waking mental capacities got mixed up in it as well, the pieces of your soul that you let the transmutation have when you fell unconscious--your bitterness, your hope. . . . So, when something is created that has no conscience, but compassion, and is a soul trying to get back to its body, it's only logical that it would do whatever it wants, in the most complicated and flashy way._

"_The chains of Paradise, Alphonse; the chains of Paradise: I simply erased them for everyone, used three "miracles" of alchemy not only to rid everything that has ailed the people since the night the unjust revolution started—so that they can finally move on—but also to destroy the structure of my body so that this cage you created so well, even subconsciously, can be weak enough to return and fuse with my self, Edward Elric. Taking the Red Water particles from bodies and the water; healing wounds, cancers and limbs with it: there were no other transmutations I could do that would ensure a complete and total breakdown of my body--__a body constructed entirely of alchemic catalyst--__to the point where my body would not try to catch a soul when transmuted again._

"_However, someone still has to fix the unborn children. I tried it out, I know it works, but I figured the hospital couldn't take it all at once. Plus . . . I didn't want to see that much blood in the streets again. So, what's left of the Red Water stone I gave to that Tringham boy. And there's still the problem of fixing _you."

_He smiled ruefully as he hefted Alphonse a little higher on his shoulder and held him with an arm that had strength equivalent to a bar of iron. "I love surprises; don't you love surprises? Well, you're certainly going to get one after all this. I couldn't let everyone else have one, and not have my dear brother and other self not. Besides, bringing you two back is the only thing that's been keeping Mustang alive all these years. . . ."_

* * *

Alphonse felt like he was spinning, and somewhere he recognized that a terrible groan escaped his exceedingly swollen throat. Eventually, he opened his eyes, and for a while just watched the dark night world spin by, from where he lay haphazardly on the ground. From the very beginning, he felt his head throbbing to the point where he blacked out a few times; it may have been worse than when he had gotten his body back. He felt unbalanced enough that he couldn't move, and he spent his strength keeping his stomach from heaving.

He wasn't successful. As he was gasping for air while throwing up blood, he brushed against something soft and warm, because that something was wrapping itself around him.

Slowly, he was pulled up against a warm body, and gently cradled against delicate white clothing, the voice of the "homunculus" speaking to him, reverentially afraid. "Alphonse," it whispered, looking around and pulling him in even more protectively, like a teddy bear to a frightened child. "Where _are_ we? What did you _do?_ There's no one here— Why— What's going _on_ . . . ?" He pulled back and looked Al's face, horrified and pleading. "What have we _done. . . ?"_

Alphonse chuckled sickly and shook his head, though he was heavy. _Nothing,_ that laugh said, as he put his palm over his mouth and found thick crimson streaks falling between his fingers. _I haven't done a damn thing._

Ed watched with wide eyes as his brother pushed away from him and tried to stand. He was doubled over, but even through the deep shadows made by the floodlights above, something was trying to connect in Edward's brain, something about the way his brother _looked_.

And then he figured it out.

"_Alphonse!_ What have you done to your face? You look so old!"

Ed grabbed for Al's suffering cheeks, absorbed, until he saw his own arm. _Felt_ his arm.

A moment after the flesh touched Al's skin, Ed pulled back with a gasp and stared at his fingers, all pale _ten_ of them. And they were _huge._ His eyes traveled downward instantly: His leg. Everything connected to him was made of the same material: pale flesh, and not at all the size he was used to.

"Dear God, what did you _do, _where _are _we?" He moaned again, a strangled noise. He cast around the scene desperately, eyes flickering over everything available for him to see. It was not day, like he remembered. It was night, in a courtyard, not the wide open space of the plaza, and with no one and nothing. . . . Not a single dying soldier, not a single cross lit up by floodlights—

"What did you _do!"_ he finally sobbed, his wide eyes coming back to Alphonse. "Where _are_ we!"

As he looked up, all intelligent words shattered in his mind. Alphonse, still fighting to keep on his feet, collapsed back down in a flash of red, glittering blood that pooled from his mouth directly down over Edward's white-clad front.

"Alphonse!" Ed jumped into Al's body and held his brother's trembling shoulders as he came back down. "Did they shoot you? Jesus, don't die, please don't die!" He let Alphonse onto the ground and then jumped to his feet with alarming speed, nearly tumbling over his weak legs in the process. Al clung to the ground, pushing his face into the cold stone and dripping dark, burgundy liquid from his mouth. Ed looked at him once more, and then spun on his heels, almost crying. "Hang _on,_ I'll go get some hel_—_"

He wasn't sure if he ever heard the sound. His chest lurched backward, and his muscles shivered like water rippling in a disrupted pond.

Alphonse looked through his own haze, but it wasn't until the body hit the ground next to him that he really understood what his eyes were telling him.

"Brother!_ Brother!"_ he shrieked, pulling Ed under him. His chest was stained with red, though he couldn't tell whose it was. _But there was so much there,__ and, and_—!

Al's mouth fell open as more thick red blood dripped from his damn _spit glands _and he shuddered bodily again, falling over. He was consumed in heat; the world swam both in his head and from his movements. The sudden flow of water in his eyes obscured his vision as well, until he forced his eyes shut again and fell against his brother, burying his head against his collar bone. Al's shoulders heaved, his whole frame wracked with sobs; he pounded on Ed's chest until he gave up and his hands hugged around the body. It couldn't--_"Dammit,_ it can't _be _like this! _No!"_

He didn't get two more strangled breaths in before there were footsteps, and a click behind him. "Hands in the air where I can see them, Elric, before I blow your fucking head off!"

"Jesus, Riza, what are you doing!" Maes yelled from the far end of the grounds, he and Havoc finally catching up. And then he stopped, seeing her. He could only see Alphonse from behind her, dark stains around and on him. Without taking his eyes from Al, he found his own weapon raised to the woman's back. "Don't shoot him, Ri_za_!"

Al couldn't spare Hughes or his soul another moment. He pulled his chest up and turned on the woman, not yet even recognizing who it was, his eyes smoldering and red. "What do you think you're _doing,_ you stupid bitch! This is my _brother,_ not the one who fucked up all those people!"

She kicked him in the chin and planted her foot on his wrist as he turned onto his stomach on the stone; in one sweeping move, she dropped down and dug her knee into his spine and thrust her gun against the back of his head.

"Looks about as dead as my child; I'd think you'd look good with him."

"Ri-_ZA!"_ Maes cried again, swallowing against the image that was burning into his mind as he rushed closer. Ed lay on the statue's platform, chest covered in thick blood behind both Riza and Alphonse. Of course, Riza wouldn't have taken that shot without actually hitting something with it, but Jesus, _Ed? _A _kill _shot, without any announcement of her presence? They didn't know what he did. God wash his sins, they weren't here to kill the city and no one knew that but him?!

He leveled his sight. If Riza thought she was going to kill Alphonse in front of his eyes, she had another thing coming.

"_Oh, and by the way," Al heard the echo in his mind, "if Riza asks—since she didn't seem to get it—"_

"Shut up, Maes!" she screamed back at him, flipping Al over onto his back and going for his throat. She pressed her hand under his chin even as he thrashed and nearly threw her over; she forced his head down instead of back, and stared into his eyes as he went for her arm. She was slightly taken aback by the amount of blood coming out of his head, but it was just flashbacks to war all the same—blood was around when you killed someone. That was just the way it worked.

And this, this was war.

"_Why!" _She leaned her weight on his throat. "Why!"

Al's free hand ripped from her arm and aimed for her temple in a fist. She saw it coming; without releasing his neck, she swept her gun to the side and fired.

Al jerked his hand back just as he was blinded. Fire, orange like burning jet fuel, ballooned in front of him. It engulfed every bit of viewable space around Riza, and an instant later, the heat hit him. The roar of the arcing fire deafened; Riza ducked and Al curled up on his side under the molten-liquid plumes. He thought he had been shot, now he was surrounded by fire--his nervous system thought he was disintegrating, and his mind told him he was already melting. He couldn't breathe.

As the searing clouds of heat were about to enshroud him, they lifted. The clouds swirled up, dissipated by wind suddenly breaking into the vortex. Al checked Riza in the sudden cold--she looked distraught and had her eyes still closed--and then he made to roll off the back of the platform. Damn them if they thought he was going to let them line up to execute him. But someone caught his movement and he hadn't made it to the edge before a bullet zipped by his forehead, and he was forced to hunch back over the body next to him, in order to avoid his own death.

He screamed in frustration. He could barely hear it over clamoring soldiers' steps and his own ragged sobs and hacks, but he damn well did it anyway. Rifles chattered to the ready as soldiers spread through the corner adjacent to the one Hughes, Riza, and Havoc had entered from, and the State Alchemists surrounded them in a tight half-circle. It grew quieter around him, and when noise had stopped, Al looked up, shaking, feverish, and furious.

No one went for him, no one touched him, and the look on his face made sure they wouldn't dare.

But there were still voices that suddenly filtered into his raging mind, of Maes and Havoc holding Riza back and Roy trying to calm her. He couldn't see them, but it was like jabbing a knife into his back repeatedly; it snapped his emotions, dug them into his flesh, because the one in _his_ arms wasn't able to talk back, now was he? No—Roy had _her _back, she had _him _back, Maes was _fine, _life was dandy, but _him?!—_

_No._

Al's eyes burned in the light as he turned to them, leaning his cheek on the blood that coated his brother's body as he held it protectively. He growled as he seethed, and as Riza struggled, he could see Mustang stepping back, and her still pulling at Havoc's arms.

"No! I know what he did, Maes; he killed our fucking _child._ Roy!"

"Child?"

"Eight _times, _Roy! The one that finally made it and he _killed it!_"

Roy stared at her.

"Why didn't you ever _tell_ me?" he asked, hushed and urgent. "You have been...? _Eight...?_"

Her glare was withering. "You didn't want to know."

It was only then that Roy seemed to become aware of his audience, and the venomous eyes on his back. When he turned to Alphonse, he was derailed even further. The entire scene that was Al, mangled and dying, sitting in a scattered pool of red with Ed tangled in his arms, broke his mind for a minute. "Alphonse—"

"I don't care if all that Sin was trying to do was fucking heal you, if you get any god-damned closer to me, I'm going to fucking _kill you!" _he screamed.

"How can you _say _that?!" Riza screamed back, causing at least a few soldiers' guns to momentarily jerk out of place as she nearly wrenched free of Havoc.

"How can you be so god-damned _blind!_" Al returned immediately, shaking. "He told me! He destroyed the cells infected with Red Water from six years ago, in_ everyone, _but he just thought it would be nice to save the children _first!"_

"How can you _say_ that! He took mine fucking _out of me _and_ you were there!"_

"He took out the _deformation,_ why do you think that's all he _said!"_

Riza went silent, and in the dreadful silence Mustang watched, Alphonse continued to lean forward and croon until he apparently felt another mouthful of blood well up. He clapped his hand over his mouth as it came out, but it slid down the bottom of his palm anyway. His eyes were tightly closed and he swayed.

In a flash, Al wondered if his insides really _were_ coming apart; if something had gone wrong and he was breaking apart. The words, the face, ghosted from his memory immediately: _"The Red Water poisoning. You had it, too. You drank it even though you knew. . . . You have to go through the cleansing, too, and watch out for everyone else I couldn't get. But if you want to be awake tomorrow, you have to do it the hard way: I can't knock you out."_

And then he had smiled a little.

As Alphonse braced against the spinning world with his legs, he heard a strange sound next to him, muffled like through a pile of clothes. And as he opened his eyes for what he was sure would the last time one way or another, Ed's pale left hand reached up, bent at the elbow, and then slowly patted Ed's chest.

Al stared as Edward coughed and searched his body, feeling around for something as he sat up. Slowly, he seemed to find something, and dug down the collar of the shirt as every soldier in the circle stared. Even Mustang took an audible step back. After a moment, Ed pulled out a chain, and then, tugging the rest of it up, produced from under his shirt what used to be a small but thick glass circle, red, orange, and yellow, with a short spire coming off of the chunk that remained.

Breathing hard, Alphonse reached out for it and disentangled it from his brother's shocked and childlike-working fingers, bringing it into his own palm to examine it without a word. "What is it?" Ed asked quietly.

Al turned it over once, then back, and as the large fractures became apparent to his eyes, he choked for a second, smiled, and then dropped it altogether and flung his arms around Ed's neck: "You're alive!"

Ed rocked backward with his weight. "What the hell? What was that thing, Alphonse, and—Whoa, where did all these people come from. . . ."

Al shivered against him, not taking the time to look back at the audience but still feeling its harsh presence on his back all the same. He clutched Ed tighter. "It's the medal Mustang gave you for being . . . a martyred hero. . . ," he reluctantly muttered into his ear, quietly, so no one else could hear. "He told me to give it to you if you ever woke up. . . ." _The doll must've taken it from the house. _"It's the highest honor the country can give now."

Al shook, and took a breath; his fingers curled around where they clung to Ed's shirt. Finally, hurt and sick, he sobbed.

"Are you kidding me?" Ed asked softly, looking past Alphonse's shoulder to Mustang, who looked decidedly older now as well. He was wearing his black overcoat that was blowing in the wind, and he hardly looked emaciated from being imprisoned, also. The man stood between them and everyone else, watching everything without a word, his fingers together at his side.

To his surprise, Ed smiled at him.

"I knew you wouldn't break your word," Ed said. "No matter how long it took."

Upon Roy's worn face came a gentle smile. "It's really you?" he asked quietly.

Ed gave Al a quick glance and then looked back to the man, nodding. "Who else would it be?"

Roy bowed his head and then, softly, reached out his hand. "Let's go."

"Are we in any danger?" Ed asked, looking around. His eyes stopped briefly on the statue towering next to him while he pulled Alphonse around his shoulder and slowly stood, and then he shook his head. He had Al's right wrist in his right hand, and he kept rubbing his fingers along Al's skin. While he was preoccupied, Al pushed away from him enough that he could glare at Mustang, hard.

"We are not," Roy told Ed simply. He motioned to his generals to take the troops away, and in a loud wave rifles were disarmed.

"Sir, are you _sure_?" asked one of them before the troops moved.

Roy's head tipped back a little, as he took a breath and did not let his eyes off of the brothers. In particular, after searching over Ed, he looked to Alphonse for a response.

"Oh, I am fucking _real, _Mustang," Al shook his head, baring his red teeth. "Don't you even dare—"

"Al—" Ed whispered to him, but Al staunchly ignored him.

Mustang took the chance and bodily turned to his general. When nothing happened from the Elrics, he was even more certain.

"Yes, I am," he said. "It's tomorrow and we're still alive, aren't we?"

The man saluted and all of the regular troops in the square filed out of the two nearest corner entranceways. Only the alchemists and the Fuhrer made no move to leave. On Ed's shoulder, Al felt like he was going to die, and even though he told his body to continue his sentinel on the soldiers, his head slumped down and his body went loose. Ed watched the scene with wide, silent eyes, no apparent desire to move.

Behind Mustang, both Maes and Riza stood, confused and uncertain, different looks attached to them. Riza fingered her stomach, and appeared to not be able to decide wether to look away or keep trying to kill with her eyes. Hughes merely stared alternately at her and the scenery in different degrees of shock and horror. Havoc, while attending to his duties, glanced at them every few seconds from across the square. Roy nodded to Havoc to continue his work, and turned to the other two.

"Hughes, take Riza to the hospital and then _go home_. Don't come into work until I call you." And to his wife, his face softened. There was no way to win the game of favorites; if he could have dealt with both right here, right now, he would have. He had honestly never seen these behaviors from either Al or Riza, and so was at a bit of a loss. If he didn't respond to Riza appropriately he would probably be divorced by the time he went home, but he knew the job had to come first. That was the first law of servitude, the luxury he'd given up for power, and Riza understood that. He told himself she did, anyway.

"Are you okay with that, Riza?" he asked gently.

She considered him without a word, then abruptly her mouth turned down and she grabbed Hughes's wrist, pulling him toward the exit. She couldn't make herself look at the brothers. "Come, Hughes," she said when her husband was out of earshot, and tears were tracing down her cheeks unbidden. "We have investigating to do."

Roy watched their retreating backs for only a moment before he turned and approached the brothers. He stepped directly in front of Alphonse, who had regained enough consciousness to glare again, and then bowed. "I'm sorry," Roy said. "Would you like me to go into detail?"

Al's brown eyes narrowed at him, a piercing glare, and he knew that any of the spite appearing to be held back was simply because his grief was getting through to his voice.

Al bristled, even growled a little as did his best to raise off his brother's shoulder. "You are going to get _words,_ Mustang, _oh _you are going to get words, but _not_ tonight. I have what I want, and it's _not __you."_

Roy took a breath and straightened up. "Right." This wasn't going to be solved tonight. Alphonse was being downright gentlemanly in declining speaking to him, and he was glad; he wasn't sure he couldn't avoid hauling off and hitting himself were he in Al's situation. Six years of pent-up rage, anger, and helplessness were not going to go away the night Al had been shot at repeatedly by those who were supposed to protect him. And beaten. And imprisoned.

"I failed you, I'm sorry," Roy said.

"Yes, you did," Al said, his voice betraying him with a tremble as his face reddened and his eyes filled with water. The surface tension of the tears broke, and small streaks of red intertwined with the thin salt streams running down cheeks. "If you had thought it was really me, would you have still shot him?"

Roy froze. "How do you know that."

Al stared back, not breathing to avoid choking. He let the man squirm under his gaze until he eventually said, lowly, "Their memories integrated."

Al smiled a little on the inside, watching Mustang try to hide his fear. But eventually, Roy looked off, shook his head, and sighed. He put his hand on his hip and sighed again, this time clasping Alphonse's free hand within his own, bright and warm. "You are like my children, Alphonse, and I take responsibility for things like that. If I created a monster, it's my job to stop it." He frowned. "But it doesn't matter, now. I learned from it. It made many mistakes, and for that I am truly sorry. As I watched him die, I was reminded of everything I'd been trying to fight for all these years and had lost sight of. I wanted to reverse my unchangeable actions in those moments—" he raised a hand helplessly toward Al, and then dropped it. "—And yet somehow, you have still granted me that. You have still allowed me redemption. Alphonse, I have no right to ask, but, will you forgive me for the wrongs I've done you?"

Al rolled his head into his brother's neck and laughed, a biting sound. He took his hand away from Mustang's offered one, but not before squeezing the man's wrist on the way out. Ed stared at them, saying nothing, but absorbing all the information with overly widened eyes.

Al opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out but a high wailing sound. Tears continued to drip from his eyes, red and disturbing, but there and unrestrained. As he hid his face in his hand and his shoulders heaved, without a word Ed rearranged his little brother on his shoulder and looked away. "I really don't have to hurt anymore, do I?" Al asked himself. While Roy tipped his head, Al suddenly looked back at him. "We've all been given a second change, Mustang. Don't give me any credit for it." He hiccuped, miserably. "Just do me a favor and stay the hell away from me tonight, okay?"

While Al wiped away more tears on Ed's shoulder, Ed tipped his head around to look at Al's face. He whispered gently to him, hefting him up a little more. "Hey Al, are you really going to be all right?"

Al nodded, patting him on the shoulder. He was vomiting less red water and infected cells, which he could take to be good. "Yeah. It's just red water. Don't worry about it."

"What?!"

"I said don't worry, and I mean it."

Roy took a breath, and straightened up. "So, what were those things doing?" he asked airily. "The papers are going to want to know, or else someone's going to want you in jail, or dead."

Al turned from Ed and hacked out a bit of red. Ed stared down as it flecked onto his bedclothes, which were now covered in cooling stains. Pressing on without him, Al ticked things off on his available fingers, sounding tired. "The_ transmutations _took the red water out of the water supply, the people, and, as I think you're gonna figure out—" he vaguely waved his hand trapped under Ed's exposed, flesh, right hand "—gave people back their missing limbs by reconstructing them _with_ the red water and infected tissue that was in the little stone they made."

Roy blew a breath through his bangs, putting his hands on his hips. He shook his head and turned, but Al's voice called him back.

"Mustang." Al was staring at him sidelong, his cheek still cradled on Ed's shoulder. "You know it wasn't us in the least, doing those things, right?"

The man took a breath. "You'll have to tell me all about it," he said.

Roy straightened his shoulders, assuming a different tone of voice, though it was equally apologetic. "There will be official letters of apology in your hands by Monday morning, and reprimands in _my _hands when I get back to my office, I assure you with the deepest of sympathies," he said to Al. "In the meantime, let's get you to the hospital, I am not going to have you arrested, and, gentleman, may I be the first to say, welcome home. It's been a long time."

He reached to pull Al away from Ed and onto himself. "Is it all right?" he asked quietly.

Al huffed and shook his head, though he switched bodies in a sack-of-potatoes way. He didn't seem comfortable with being toted away, but the man was a better size to lean on and hadn't just been transmuted, running the risk of falling over. "Yeah well, any money you would award me as reparations wouldn't cover the damage I'm doing to this statue by bleeding all over it." It may have been a joke, but it still sounded spiteful. "I like the statue."

Al hung on to Ed's hand as he was transferred to Mustang's shoulders, but Ed let his hand slip away and hung back as the two started toward the cars. The sudden absence of warmth and comfort seemed to wake his brain up. He continued to rub his right arm, and stared up at the starry night sky, then the statue. He had no idea where they were, or what they were doing. There were no snipers on the building roofs, and it was _cold_. Much colder than he remembered. He was wearing clothes he shouldn't be, and everyone looked so _old._ . . .

He touched the back of his head. He remembered feeling the blood running down the back of his neck, but there had never really been any pain. It got fuzzy after that, heavy and confusing. There was no wound anywhere on his body though, and his hair was _long_.

There was only one explanation for this, and he didn't like it.

Slowly, he got onto his knees, and moved his fingers over the "blood" on the ground. He put his hands together and felt the familiar tingle; he touched his index finger to the cement and in a flash, the red stains separated, into water and a few other chunks of material; they clustered into balls on top of the ground, cleansing the white marble surface.

Ed smiled a tiny bit at the findings, and found himself starting to cry. Memories ran through his head, of bleeding, of things driving through his flesh, of looking at so many people's faces when both of them knew there was no saving either party. And from further back—his dying mother, his limbs ripping off and disintegrating at the same time, the heat of a transmutation's aftermath and Al disappearing, blood everywhere, and his family. . . . Then Pinako, Winry, aging through all the years he'd known them—

Al stopped and tugged on Roy's shoulder. He had looked back, only to find Ed collapsed on the ground, holding his head and sobbing. Al dropped away immediately and ran back to him, stumbling only once in the process. God, his body was like lead.

"Brother! Edward! Talk to me!"

Tears were streaming down his face and he shook his head, shivering, despite managing to speak. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. It's just, I'm seeing things, is all. My life's flashing before my eyes. . . ."

Al held either side of Ed's face and forced him steady. "It's all right. Just push it off. Look at me, think of me. Let it flow, don't pay attention to it. . . ." Ed stared at him, not completely there, and Al started petting his head. "Tell me when it stops."

Ed closed his eyes and let the cold from Al's hands seep into his skin. "Why is this happening, what did you _do,_ Alphonse? What did you _sacrifice?_"

A bit away from them, Roy crossed his arms and sighed, though he did listen intently. Havoc came up next to him, saluted, and then clasped Roy's shoulder tightly. "Thank you, Sir."

Roy nodded, worn and tired. "I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining this."

Havoc put his hands on his hips and watched the scene as well. "What are you gonna do?"

He shrugged, and ticked his head. "They're better than a movie. I want some popcorn."

"Sir!"

"Come on, Havoc, if I didn't laugh about something, I'd be a little more nuts right now." He chuckled once at the irony, then dropped it, quickly, a bit frightened. "However, we're never going to get out of here if they keep going like this. The next time Al gets up, he's going to tip right over into the statue and bust his head open. Ed's going to pass out at any moment—look at that—and still they talk. Jesus."

"Like I said," Havoc said, "What do you want to do?"

Al took a breath, and then gave up, resting his forehead against Ed's. "It doesn't matter what I sacrificed; I have it back now. Don't worry about me, worry about yourself."

"I'm not a homunculus," he said, but looking for conformation.

Al pulled Ed close to him, enfolding his head against his chest, in the dark cocoon under his arms. He shook his head, breathless. "No."

"And I'm not dead?"

"We're all alive. This is the world you knew. Just a few years later." He his arms cradled Ed tighter. "Just the same."

Ed sighed, a desperate plea. "Take me home."

A shadow fell over them. Mustang stood just behind him, hard to see in the backlight. And next to him, splashed over the ground, was Havoc's shadow. "Might I suggest the hospital, again?" he said. "Both of you need it. And I promised not to arrest you."

Ed just stared at them, and Al was about to sputter something when in one sweep, Havoc flipped Ed over his shoulder and Mustang went for Al. At this point, Ed didn't make a single sound, trying to reorient his suddenly upside-down head. Al beat his fist on Roy's arm. "I'll bleed all over your damn uniform," he threatened. "And this crap is _sticky._ No dry-cleaner in the _world _can get it out. PS, it's _poisonous!_"

"Come now, Alphonse. Anything you throw up out of spite, I'll just make Ed clean up. Also, you don't want to surprise me and have me drop you on your head, do you? Avoiding that is the whole reason I'm doing this." He shifted Al's weight and let him down on his feet, but held on to his arm. "You can talk all night at the hospital. Honestly, Al, I don't want you to die."

Havoc did the same shift to Ed, and then nodded as he hooked his arm securely around Ed's waist. "Sorry about earlier, Alphonse."

"It's okay," Al said quietly, genuinely, though a little surprised. "You did the best you could."

Roy's look softened a little, and Havoc shook his head. "Not that good."

Ed was still walking in a daze, rubbing his fingers together, and looking at his leg as it worked.

After a while, he realized he was looking down at his foot over Havoc's _shoulder._ ". . . Why am I this _tall?"_ he asked in awe.

Al shook his head, almost bursting into tears again. "You _grew,_ brother," he managed to get out before wiping at his eyes.

Ed was at a loss for words. Mustang, for once, kept his mouth shut on the matter. Havoc was continually avoiding Ed's clumsy limbs knocking him in the back of the leg, and a grin cracked at the side of his mouth, the side no one could see. "Just another thing to celebrate, right boss? Speaking of, who's gonna foot the bill? I'm goddamn hungry."

Roy hummed thoughtfully. "I wonder I'm going to have to revoke your promotion, since you aren't really dead?"

"What?" Ed asked quickly.

"You're a Lieutenant-Colonel," Al explained with a shrug, though he was shuddering away memories and refused to look at his brother for it. _Death promotion, and all that._

"Though, there are a lot of disability benefits we won't have to pay out now, so I don't think _your _pay hike will be much of an issue. You never accepted the survivor checks anyway, though, did you, Alphonse?"

Al shrugged again. "You would have found me if I had."

"Will you add that to the list of things you're going to tell me about?" he said. "Off the record, of course."

It took a moment, but Al nodded. "You deserve as much." A touch came on Al's shoulder, light and gentle; he looked, and it was from Ed.

"You didn't do something stupid like transmute me in front of all those soldiers, did you?" he asked lowly. He looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In fact, he didn't look too good, at all. They were almost to the black military fords (plus a tank, good lord), so they would be able to sit him down, fast.

Al was about to say something to that effect when a thought streaked across his mind at the view of the dark park beyond the street, and its bar-like lamp posts.

"Mustang," he started rather frantically, pulling off of him. "What did you do with Russell?"

Roy stared at him, then his eyes widened. "Havoc, do you have a phone? I need to make sure no one kills that boy."

"No, I don't." He swung Ed's arm over his shoulder and set him gently, but quickly, on the ground. "Ed, you gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. . . ?"

"Okay, good."

Roy's mind was still running just as Havoc tried to dart off. "Hey wait, Havoc!"

"Yessir?"

"Al." Roy's dark eyes surveyed him quickly. "That other kid. Was that—"

"His brother? Yes. That general that almost broke my skull didn't get to him, did he?" He was the only general he knew other than Hughes, and there was a decided chance that, if he'd been called to the station before, he was still on duty now.

Roy looked to his subordinate. "Havoc?"

Havoc took a nervous breath, and nodded. "I'll be right back." He shot off toward the tank.

Al sighed and plunked down on the shallow steps that led down to the street, next to his brother. What few feet separated them, he quickly scooted closed. He had his forearms resting on his knees, and a rather sage look upon his face, eyes closed. He held that pose for a second, then slyly opened his eyes the slightest bit, up at Roy. "You're going to have to make that phone call pretty soon." His mouth quirked up into a dark smile. "I promise I won't run. . . ."

Mustang had his hands on hips, standing just out of arm's reach. He sighed heavily, shook his head, and rolled his eyes. "Be there when I get back," he warned, dropping his hands and turning on his heel.

Al watched his dark coat sway in the breeze as he went, with an amused smile.

Ed was still confused, light-headed and shaky, but he couldn't help but snicker. At this point, he was thankful for whatever level of consciousness he could get his hands on. He elbowed Alphonse. "Best excuse to make Mustang leave, _ever."_ He laughed a little, accompanied by a toothy grin, then rubbed his hand through his hair. God, just _feeling_ things was amazing and ran shivers up his spine. He took a breath of the cold, clear night air. "So the Tringhams are here?" he asked. "What's up?"

Al nodded and leaned into him. The warmth of his brother's living, conscious body against his own flesh . . . even now, it was something he knew that he would look back on and not have traded it for anything. Al slid one hand around Ed's shoulders and rubbed his back. He clasped Ed's right hand where it rested on Ed's right knee and marveled at it, something that hadn't been there in a long, long time. He rubbed Ed's hand, and when he finally spoke, his voice was hushed. "So, you were up on that cross. . . ."

Mustang, leaning against the tank with the phone against his ear, watched the two from beyond the circle of light, shutting out everything in dark shadows around him. In a minute, Havoc returned from giving orders to someone, and just as he was about to make his way back to the stairs, Roy grabbed his collar and pulled him back. He put his hand on Havoc's chest, and as Jean was watching the brothers' scene, Roy let his hands slip away.

"Go find a reporter to take a picture of that," he said, dipping the receiver away from his mouth and pointing off to the barricade of soldiers behind the cars.

As Havoc disappeared into the night once again, a specialist appeared from inside the tank. "Fuhrer Sir, I've found the second number."

"All right, patch me through."

As the line rang, he watched the two shapes on the steps, a serene calm floating through him and the night. The photo face down on his desk came to mind, followed by a flood of memories from years ago, days in the bright sunlight and hurting night alike. He couldn't remember now, whether there had been more pain or more happiness, but the hope, the knowledge of what would one day come, that had been the brightest light in his past when it came to Ed. And Alphonse, too.

He let himself smile. When he thought of them now, his future, he knew where his hope came from. How to make his future. He tried to deny it, but his eyes watered, just as the ringing on the other end of the line ceased and a voice came on. He knew: There were going to be a lot more pictures on his desk soon.

* * *

_A/n:_

_Imagine that, there's a happy ending._

_Be sure to tune in for the epilogue, if you want more happies and a bit of melancholly, or just to see fuller explanations. And Ed. The real one._


	11. Chapter 10: Epilogue

In the midnight darkness, the hotel room was the only thing that existed. Four walls; a bed; the trappings of the room surrounding; two brothers sitting on the edge of one bed. There was a foot between them, but no distance in their minds.

His feet crossed and his hands supporting his weight on the blood-red comforter, Alphonse stared ahead into the darkness. Beside him, a silent Edward detailed the pores in his own hand, eyes shifting without blinking until he took in every molecule of every object around him, one at a time and then time and time again; without a word, without movement, he puzzled out Existence, as he had been prone to do since he'd been awakened.

"You're alive, brother," Al said suddenly, in awe, toward the wall.

"Yes, I am," Ed answered after a while, slow and monotone. His wide eyes did not unglue from the pores in his hand.

"I have a _body_. . . ?_"_

"Yes, you do."

"Do you realize the last time this happened was . . ." He tried to think of it, but couldn't. ". . . How long ago?"

"What about Those couple of days?"

Al shook his head, slowly, though his glazed eyes stillstared straight ahead. "Those don't count."

"Why not?" Ed asked, leaning barely more on his right hand and falling a little closer to his brother. "_I_ think they do—"

"I don't remember them."

"You don't?"

He moved his head from left to right, slowly, but his unblinking eyes did not waver from the point they fixated on. His whole body was taught, Ed realized, and when Al spoke, it was ghostly. "They didn't have enough time to stick. They're there somewhere, but I can't find them. I had to discard them, to stay alive."

"Hm."

They were there. Two bodies amber in the wooden room, breathing warmth and the orange halo of a single candle whispering against the shadows they were part of. Two bodies, but he felt them and the night, the moment of existence in this room, where existence and feeling were all one force of muted sound and blazing emotion. Al breathed out into the heat, and felt his heart spilling out.

"Promise me," he whispered, "that this night will never end. Promise me, that you will be here. That this moment will continue, and we will be together. Forever."

_Even in to the next life, I will make sure. _Ed's hand reached out into the gap of inches and took Al's warm hand into his own, and held it tightly. "I promise."

* * *

_Epilogue_

_The Beautiful World_

* * *

Russell leaned back against the red couch and tossed his head. The room was clad in red and gold and wood, and had more square footage than two starter homes. He placed one booted foot upon the shiny coffee table in front of him and then crossed the other on top of it. A cushion over on the couch, Fletcher glanced at Major Havoc to see if this would inspire any retaliation over tastelessness. Havoc, however—by all accounts hanging out in an armchair at the far end of the setup—didn't care, much less look impressed. He waved his hand in dismissal, then shrugged and went back to "monitoring" their conversation.

Across from the Tringhams, the Elric brothers sat, one in a suit and one in a blue military uniform. Ed played absently with the end of his hair, while Al crossed his knees and took a long drink of tea.

"How can you drink that stuff right now, Al? Doesn't that have caffeine? How wired do you want to _be_ for this thing?" Russell queried.

"Trust me," Al answered, feeling the warmth against his throat, and then allowing a small smile, "it's better than a beer in this situation."

Fletcher snickered, and Russell smiled. He couldn't make up his mind about who he wanted to stare at more, the guy who was no longer a shell of armor, or the man who'd changed so much that he was barely recognizable. As the admiration crept into him again, he was again hit with the humble realization that he'd managed to gain the confidence and respect of two celebrities he'd in his youth only ever _dreamed _to have glance at his work.

He decided to drop his gaze, and it landed on his shoes, shined bright for the occasion. The entire story was a little odd, but alchemy did weird things. At first when he got the minimal explanation from Alphonse, he had been somewhat unsure as to wether or not to be afraid of the man or worried for him. Still, when he could get Al to smile, he definitely aimed toward the harmless side; the knowledge of their letters over the past few years also helped put him at ease. Yes, alchemy and humans could do strange things. But Russell himself was part of the story, a large chunk of which only he was privy to. It wasn't all bad.

Still, it was nice when Al–sane Al–had healed his bruises, restoring him to near-twin state with Edward. He was starting to wonder how many more times he was going to get mistaken for the man—for good or bad—in his life.

"So," Ed asked from his corner of the furniture setup, "What have you been doing all this time? Considering branching out into anything?"

Russell nodded. "Actually, I've been going to Central University. Chemistry and biology. Going into, ahem, _bioalchemy_ studies as a grad student. I fast-tracked though, thank God. 'What is alchemy?' Good lord, Edward, you and Al knew what you were doing. Just figure it out for yourself and make a name _that_ way." He did a combination of laughing and sighing all at once.

Ed whistled. "Nice, very nice. I'll send my name in to give you any help you need. 'Course, scholars probably discounted me if I ever cared to look. And, I never wrote any papers; Al was always the one that had time and energy for that. They're all in his name."

Alphonse nodded. "Yes, brother, everyone discounted you because you were too busy repairing buildings you damaged to make any 'headway' in science."

"Bunch of crap," Ed sighed, thunking his foot down on the table as well. "I'm just going to have to get my good name back."

"Papers here you come," Al muttered. "All pens quiver in fear of misuse."

Ed shot him a dirty look, but then sighed and gave it up. Retribution could always be achieved later—they _were _staying together in _one_ hotel room. He rolled his right hand on his wrist, considering, in awe, finally being able to properly work a pen again. He held up his hand in front of his face and wiggled the fingers: How long would it take to regain the proficiency he now had with his left?

But then. . . . He held up his left hand to match. Given the atrophy . . . , he may be equally screwed.

"Al, you may have to be a secretary for a while," he mumbled absently, turning over his hands.

"Always was," his brother said, bouncing his foot and taking another drink.

"Ah, well. . . ." Russell considered the image in front of him for a second—Ed going into poverty of movement staring at his arms like the rest of them weren't there, _again, _and Al reclining in the corner next to him with his eyes closed—and decided to forge ahead. He placed his cup on the table to get their attention.

"I'd been communicating off and on with Al about the—uh—" he looked over at Havoc, who looked back; Russell had to sigh and push on through. "Yeah, about the red water back at Xenotime. I had no idea that was what he was doing it for—hell, you could have _told _me not to drink the damn water here, Alphonse—but with your help, Al, we could get government funding to do the rest of the cleanup for people."

Al nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that, but at the time, there was nothing I could do. I hadn't worked out the formulas yet, and if I told you, you'd tell everyone else, and it would just cause a general panic that no one could do anything about. _If _they even believed you." He shrugged. "But yes, apparently the array to help feti has been perfected, and people will be very happy to see us. Along with whomever else is away from the city right now but was here six years ago."

Russell nodded, though he self-consciously chose that moment to sit on his hand. "The money from the project should support us for a good while and kick-start any further research projects I may want. I'm thinking of buying a winery out in the country once I pay off my loans, though, maybe. Do specialized research there."

Fletcher leaned forward, took up his teacup and snorted. "Really? You still want to do that? Jesus."

Russell narrowed his eyes. "Yes. . . . _Help the people _with better plant species and things. . . ?"

Ed sighed across the table, and one of his arms ran through his hair to the back of head while the other one fell to his lap. "Just don't make me have to come chase down any god-damned plant chimeras. I hated those things."

As a quiet laugh went around the room, Al smiled behind his drink. _Aside from his arms, Ed's the only one acting like nothing's happened in all this time. _He huffed, rippling the reflection in the tea he stared into. The whole ordeal, from start to finish, still had him off-kilter in different spots. Six years of pain was not easy to erase the traces of so abruptly. Yes, he had hoped for less spectacular things with all his might, but undoing the resulting adaptations made for a life of subjugated despair was a different matter all together. Especially since he had long ago reached the point where he had given up believing that anything good would happen. He had always held a tiny candle of hope despite that, but it was a candle he had shut somewhere dark and forced himself to ignore. And that was only half the battle. Ed was here, yes, but Al wasn't used to dealing with other people, anymore. How many years had he been talking to himself for company, and abusively? He supposed calm would come back easily enough, though, if he let it. And Ed wasn't about to abandon him. . . . All in all, it would be all right... Right?

He stole a furtive glance at Edward: down his right arm and to his legs. Then his eyes moved down his own body, and finally he tracked them over to the manila folder on the other side of him, obtrusively occupying the empty space next to him on the couch.

They were separate events, none of which he had fully let himself come to terms with. And it wasn't like he hadn't simply _matured_ over six years.

Other thoughts chose this moment to attack, swirling through his mind and his feelings, like watching a reflection in a murky pool.

Al closed his eyes and sighed.

In a moment, Ed leaned over toward him and called his name. "You all right?" he asked.

"Yes." Al shook his head and placed his hand on Ed's. "Just let me speak today. There are a lot of things I've been wanting to say for a long time. A lot of things I've been wanting to let go."

He trailed off, and in sympathy, Ed tapped his own cheek. "You know I'm not going to disappear on you, don't you? This is real, and you don't have to wait for something to fail on you, it's not going to."

"I know," Al said, rather miserably. "If I had done it with my own hand, I wouldn't have had trouble. But as it happened. . . ." He shook his head.

Al looked up at Ed, and Ed knew for a fact it was something else more pressing in there. _There was another you, and I watched him give himself up. What am I supposed to do about that?_

Ed smiled for him and gave him a squeeze. "Just take it slow, you know. That's what I'm doing. Patience, I guess."

Russell nodded from his post, and offered something of his own to ease the subject. "You know, I'm really glad to see you again. Both of you. I like having you around. I never got to say that before. And now I have the chance."

The brothers smiled just as there was knock at the door. Surprisingly, Mustang poked his head in from behind the oak door. "Gentleman," he greeted. "Edward, can I see you for a minute?"

"What, no attendants?" Ed quipped. Roy simply waited, and Ed quickly detached from Al with a gentle pat on his shoulder and joined the man in the hall. Fletcher and Al's voices floated quietly across the room until Roy shut the heavy wooden door with a quiet _click_.

In the new silence, Ed was hushed. "It _is_ nice to see you again," he offered.

Roy nodded. "It is."

Even though that was all he said, there was so much more behind the words. Ed understood, though, and didn't need to hear any more to get the message. "Uh, so, did you come to tell me anything?"

"No. I just wanted to talk to you today, before the ceremony. This is all the time I'm going to have."

"Oh, uh, okay." Ed shifted uncomfortably and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking down the hall. "So, what are you going to do with the statue, now?"

"Just because our personal struggle has been fixed, doesn't mean that everyone's hurts have been healed. We cannot bring people back from the dead, except for when we resurrect them in our hearts. It's still a highly valid monument."

Ed grinned, a wry look shooting out of the corner of his eye. "Who knew you were such a softie?"

Roy shrugged, gently. "The longer I'm here, the more wisdom it gives me."

They were quiet. Ed shifted on his feet and ran his hand down the back of his neck, staring at the floor. "Six years of Al's life. _Your _lives. What am I supposed to do about that?"

Roy smiled; this, he had a plan for. "Consider it like being deployed that long, and now coming back home. You weren't here, but that doesn't mean you weren't _really_ here with us. There's more to learn than the usual, since there was no "correspondence," but we're accepting people, Ed. It wasn't like you left us or we left you; on the contrary, we couldn't forget about you.

"Human beings are malleable, adaptable, Edward. Let that be your phrase and pick up from there. A fresh start, how's that sound? It still feels like just after you got Al's body returned to him, right? It's a new life for you anyway, freer than its ever been."

Ed nodded, softly. "Yes. It does. I have some of that thing's memories, as well, however. His knowledge. Well, I suppose it was my soul, walking around with a substitute, blank mind to work with. Probably some kind of copy of my head, linked to my existing brain." He pointed to his skull absently. "So I _was _there. But at the same time, I wasn't." He sighed, sniffling a little.

Roy tipped his head, considering. He was as best as could be expected, though it was an odd turn. At least he wasn't going to have to worry about being suddenly developmentally behind everyone, or having to deal with the feeling of the world leaving him behind, the stress of losing people he knew over the fact that he was no longer anything like them, by himself. Damage control that was working. It wasn't like Al was going anywhere, but it was going to take some time for him to get back to his old self . . . if he wanted to. It would probably be painful to return to and wrap up things in La Fanté, as well. But, at least, Alphonse wasn't going to abandon Edward if things got a little rough, and for that, Roy was eternally grateful.

Roy put his hands in his pockets and shifted topics, a happier tone to things. It was a question he was genuinely wanting to ask, and his day needed a pickup. "So, what's it like to have a bigger body?"

Ed laughed, brightly, though half the resulting things he said were sarcastic. "It's _great. _I'm falling down stairs and tripping over my own feet. I have no understanding of what size my clothes are or my fingers for that matter, and my hair is getting in the fucking way." He tipped his head back, laughing, and ran his hand over the top of his head, the fine hair pulled tight to his scalp in its ponytail. "There is some muscle atrophy I'm dealing with, but both Al and I know how to improve that, though it will take some time. Good old Al, he was still exercising my muscles for me all this time, so it could be a whole lot worse. . . ." He looked at Roy, who raised his eyebrows in amazement, before Ed rubbed his neck self-consciously. "Yeah, I know, right? Gonna have to do a rather large bunch of good somethings for him. Um, with the other things, though—my brain appears fine. Just getting tired easily a bit. That should improve quickly as time goes on, though."

Roy nodded. "I can see that, yeah."

Suddenly, Ed frowned. "What is it?" Roy asked.

Ed shook his head, reddening a bit. "I think that . . . other body was definitely connected to my brain. Maybe that's why it was acting in such odd ways. Getting only fragmented signals, you know?" Roy nodded, and Ed continued, though glancing guiltily at him. ". . . I'm sorry my soul's such a jerk."

Roy stared, and Ed rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, sorry it broke your ribs and screwed up . . . everything."

Mustang put his head in his hand and laughed. "Jesus, Ed, you had no control over it, nothing to do with it, whatsoever; don't think you did." But Ed's petulant face frowned down at him, and Roy sighed. "Fine. Apology accepted. Don't go worrying yourself over it, okay? When people sleepwalk, they don't act normal. Don't start thinking you're some terrible person within, okay."

Ed stared at him, a bit awed, and Roy tossed his head. "C'mon Ed, I know you better than you ever gave me credit for."

Ed threw up his hands and agreed. "Okay, fine. But honestly, _thank you, _for everything you've ever done for me. I don't want to die having never said that."

Roy winced a little. "Well, we're all going to have many more years ahead of us, now, thanks to this." He smiled gently to himself, and then nodded for Edward. How little subterfuge Roy found himself needing to do in conversation, now that he was no longer climbing ladders. "You are welcome, Edward. Sincerely. Thank your soul for me. But, more on being tall."

"Oh yes!" Ed nodded, putting his fist in his hand. "Being tall. It's got all the great points that I thought it did. All the people who have been mobbing me this week, I can see _over _them!" With more than a little amusement, Roy watched him begin to gesticulate as he spoke. "And _you, _and _Russell, _and _Havoc!_ Armstrong's still got me beat but he didn't nearly kill me this time! Honestly, it is amazing."

Roy laughed, then patted him on the shoulder. "Good, good."

Ed nodded and waited for the man to remove his hand before he spoke again. When he did, he'd switched to a more somber tone, his look downcast. "So is it really okay if we show up at this thing? I mean, we're rather prominently in that monument, is it a little boisterous to _be _there, too?" He raised his hands helplessly, and after a second got detracted by the fact that he had a hand. Then he looked at his newly-made foot, and then remembered what he was doing and looked back to Roy, flustered.

Mustang smiled, then nodded. "Right, we weren't exactly figuring you to be there, you mean? Yeah. Well, if you just randomly showed up, it being the delayed end of the ceremony and all, I'd say it might be a problem. But, since you two have been so warmly welcomed out on the streets this last week, it'll actually be a good healing thing. The public seems rather excited. They want to thank you, use your triumph, their hero, to improve their own stories. And, I'm sure whatever Al's cooking up to say, it'll be a big hit."

"You think so?"

Roy nodded. "It'll be from the heart, Edward, and I think it'll accomplish what it's supposed to. He _is _the one delivering everyone into the light for a reason."

Ed smiled, and after a second nudged Roy in the ribs. "So did you cook that thing up all by your lonesome?"

Mustang took a step back, playful but serious. "You'll never know, and I think it's better that way."

Ed sighed, rolling his eyes. While he was doing that, Mustang pulled a fist-sized black box from his coat pocket. "Here." He set it into Ed's hands, then tapped the hands that closed around it. "I've gotta go, but I'll see you at the ceremony."

Mustang turned and walked down the hallway. Ed, only after a moment remembered to call after him: "Hey, how's Riza, by the way?

Roy waved over his shoulder. "She's pregnant. I don't think she can get any better than that."

Ed smiled to himself, amused at the little jaunt in the man's steps as he disappeared down the blue-and-gold-clad hall.

_Fuhrer, eh? _

Still smiling, he opened the black-velvet box and looked over the glass fire pendant. It was swirled in the middle and twisted off into several thick, different-colored spirals of glass in independent directions. Along one of the spires that twisted in to the middle, were inscribed words—his name and a sentiment, his sacrifice—etched by alchemy. He sighed, and closed the little box back up. He carefully deposited it into his uniform's trouser pocket and then opened the ornate door ahead of him, back into the room with his life within.

"It was a close one."

* * *

The make-up day for the holiday was a brilliantly sunny one, the light strengthening and lengthening with the coming spring. The wind traveled over the hills visible from the plaza's park, scattering the grass just coming back to life this way and that. The thousands of people set out in chairs in front of the stage and standing as a colored sea beyond that huddled together, but not because they were cold. On the wind were whispers of expectation, of the electric energy each body carried; together with the sweet scent of spring's first flowers and pollens, the day felt alive.

There were dark green cloth screens to either side of the stage and directly behind it, concealing the road between the park and the plaza, where the monument was housed. When Edward, Alphonse, Russell, and Fletcher exited the black military car, no one saw them. Fletcher and Russell said their temporary goodbyes and ducked out to join the crowd; Ed and Al went to the right, hiding behind the curtain-sheltered waiting area.

Ed whistled as he bent around one curtain and surveyed the stage, up the stairs and to the ornate podium. Then he broke a smirk and narrowed his eyes at Al.

"My baby brother's all grown up, he's giving _speeches,"_ he cracked.

Alphonse took a breath and smacked him on the back of the head with his folder. "You _should_ have been giving them years ago, if you bothered to be useful to the scientific community. Oh wait, no, you were giving them _a lot _to random townsfolk that had wronged you, they just couldn't_ see _you!"

Ed gaped, and tried to make a response, but his mouth opened and closed a couple of times and got out nothing more than angry huffs. Eventually, he pointed at Al and glared. "Oh what you would get, Alphonse, if no one would hear us. . . ."

Al smiled and shook his head. "Oh, Brother, I love you." He wrapped his arms around Ed's back and for minute, just reveled in the feel of someone else being there, someone else _alive._

Ed rubbed his back kindly and then patted him to be released. This body was his work, the product of his sweat and blood. . . . His _flesh _and blood.

"Mom would be proud of you," he whispered suddenly. "That's what I mean, you know."

Al stared at him, and then looked away. "Yeah, she would." He punched his brother in the arm gently, and then pointed out his uniform. "Proud of you, too. . . . Look at all you've done in your life so far, and you're not even near done yet."

Ed smiled and nodded, feeling a sudden flush of heat and unhappiness from his stomach and burning up into his face. His hand went to below his collarbone, where he fingered the pendant through his military jacket absentmindedly. He looked toward the stage. "Going to be a little more careful from now on, though."

Al hummed an assent, but brushed it off. Thoughts of his mother didn't really hurt anymore; he mostly remembered the good things of her, the love she gave him, what she stood for, rather than the fact that he'd lost something he needed. He could stand on his own now, and he would. To have him become something independent and loving, that was what his mother wanted all along, after all. What all right mothers did.

"It wouldn't have been a wasted life, if it had ended forever," Ed said suddenly, and Al's mouth quirked down. "I was loved; I gave love; made the world a better place. I can't say that I wasn't afraid, but what I was afraid for . . . was you." Ed made sure he had the full attention of Al's gentle, soft brown eyes before he continued. He tried to force into them his acceptance of his words, of the calm it gave him. "I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to help people anymore, that I wouldn't be there for you, and others. Perhaps it's megalomaniacal, to demand from life that I can change things, but I know I did and I wanted to keep doing it."

Ed tipped his head as he looked at the stage, swaying back and forth a little bit as he spoke against the backdrop of green grass. "Everyone dies, but it doesn't have to be a sad thing. Death is part of the circle, and how you decide to act about it is up to you. You could mourn me, but I'd rather you celebrate me and yourself. Abrupt, it may have been, but there are still things we can do. No one should be sad for what I missed; I may have missed it or missed _me, _but they have to be practical and go on with life. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean they should hurt too. But that's not something I need to be there to do, you know, after I pass away. It's you, the people I loved and who knew me, who take what I gave you and keep me alive with it. And if I'm there with you, I won't have missed out on anything and you won't be missing anything.

"Knowing that, Al—" he turned back to his brother, still fingering his medallion but smiling all the same, "—makes me less scared. If they paid attention, people can keep me alive if they need me. If they want to, anyway." He shrugged, and his eyes were big as he watched Al's reaction. Slowly, he reached out and patted Alphonse on the shoulder. "Thank you, Al, for keeping me alive."

"No, no. . . ." Al, wringing his hands, finally shook his head, accepting that he couldn't stop the tears. Biting his lip, he reached out for his brother's arm. "I'm _so glad_, _so _glad, that you're here now." He smiled through the pain twisting his face. "You're welcome, brother. You're welcome. It was worth it. Thank you, for continuing to fight for me."

And then Ed was being smothered with Al's embrace again, and he didn't try to stop it.

"If something happen to one of us, try to keep a sense of humor about it. I don't want you to be sad. Find something that goes and makes you happy, and do it. Don't look at what you lost, but what you still have. Okay? Please, for me?"

He forced Al to look at him, but Al just shook his head. "You won't leave me," Al said. He buried his face in Ed's jacket. "And I won't let you."

Ed bit his lip, and then petted his brother's head. "Right. I'll be right here."

"Stop talking, brother," Al demanded."I won't let you be sad anymore," he said abruptly, pulling away.

"What?" Ed asked, bewildered, catching hold of Al's wrist and not letting him leave.

Al smiled kindly, and gave his brother another tight hug. Only after that, he squeezed him tight and then gave him a pat on the back. "Stay here for a second," he said, running one hand down Ed's arm and then pressing his folder into the man's chest with the other.

"What? Why—?"

"I've got a surprise for you," Al answered brightly as he hurried to the curtain and toward the crowds. "But you don't get it if you don't stay _right _there."

Ed turned out his hands helplessly. "I'll be right here?"

Al nodded quickly, and wiped his eyes as he hurried around the drape. Ed, for his part, cracked a wicked smile and put it out of his mind by flipping Al's folder open.

* * *

The world outside the sheltered cove was crisp and clean; thousands of white chairs stretched in perfect alternating rows as far as Al cared to see. To stage left—on the other side of the field of chairs—was the exterior wall of the monument with its main entrance; to the right beyond the setup of sound equipment was the edge of town. Nine am fields stretched out into the misty distance, gently rolling to a lower elevation at the horizon, over which the low sun rose. The hydrogen ball was mostly obscured for now, but the mist would soon clear.

Al stretched his hands above his head, his jacket rising above his shoulders as he did so. So wonderful, to know that he could misbehave in the eyes of society just a little. But there was still one thing to do: he had to find them.

With a sigh, he let his hands fall and readjusted the woolen jacket around his shoulders. Imagine, that he'd have to be doing this again, so soon. The massive change in funeral suit size from the last time did nothing to make it feel like a more distant occasion.

But no, this fog would clear. He would make it if he had to.

Al made his way to the center aisle, past a few seated elders; unaware children milling about wishing they could run and play; and men and women standing around, gently conversing. A few suits and uniforms blocked the view of his destination, and then, when they parted for him, he saw his goal.

Al raised his hand slightly to the large man and slender woman standing in the isle, the woman clad noticeably in white with a little black—a sash, a pin—glaring contemptuously at the unoccupied podium.

"Sensei," he offered quietly when her back didn't turn.

He held his hand out, as he stood surrounded by rows of white folding chairs, cold wind drawing his hair this way and that. With dark curtains beyond him to his right and half-barren hills stretched into the distance to the left, he had to smile in his black suit. There was barely anything left of the vibrancy he once had as he stood in this unrelenting sunlight before her, and he knew how she saw it.

Her dark hair framing her pale skin was the first thing he remembered when she turned; her dark eyes, always full of complex adult emotions he could never quite grasp hold of set on him with a frown, and he forced himself to look at her while she figured out who he was. She hadn't aged much at all that he could tell, but she was the type of woman that aged on the inside. He had only come to know what she felt like, every day, when he spent long nights alone in La Fantae, realizing he had aged well beyond his years simply by being around people he could not be with.

Al looked up into her black eyes and forced himself not to cry as he stood there.

_I know now, Sensei, who you are, what you wanted to tell us. I wish I could have learned simply by listening, but things don't always turn out the way we want, do they?_

She put her hands against her mouth, and for a moment she shook her beautiful head. She looked back between her husband and Al a few times, and then she watched him. While her eyes were tearing up behind her hand, Alphonse knew exactly what she thought: The one surviving Elric brother, forcing a smile on his face, wearing a black suit and standing alone before her, surrounded by rows of empty white folding chairs and an open field.

And then, what she had been wanting to say the most after all the years came:

"Did you have Ed's funeral?"

_Without me? _it said. _Did you force yourself to go through that on your own?_

"I hear you are invited to this every year, and every year, you come," he said, avoiding the question.

"I come every year," she agreed, speaking with an ease that told Alphonse it had been what she had been grinding over just before he arrived to take her away from it. "To remind myself why I hate the military, and that you didn't die meaninglessly. The Fuhrer puts me right in the first civilian row, and says appropriate things so that I don't break his face."

"She tried once," Sig added from behind her, in his normal bear-like tone. It was edged, a bit, with upset.

"Yes," she added with a bite. "And it pleases me to know that I take up enough of his guards' attention every year that an assassination attempt might work. And then we have a private dinner somewhere, make each other feel bad commiserating over how much we miss you, and I tell him his speeches don't equal my children and if he could find you soon I would really appreciate that—"

"Oh, Sensei. Please don't cry. . . ." Al reached out and midway decided to simply give her a hug while she put her face in her hands. "Really, really Sensei, it's all right," he soothed. "I'm sorry I've made you so sad, but really, really it will be all right now, I promise. . . ." Al looked up and sighed: how easily she returned him back into his child's role, and yet, it wasn't quite the same: . . . He'd grown a bit, inside and out.

Inside his arms, after sobbing on his shoulder for a time and clutching him tightly, she stepped back and surveyed him, petting his hair like she remembered doing when he was a child. "I will never begrudge you your decisions, Al. You are more important to me than my ideals for myself. You are an adult now: I cannot control what you do, but please, don't disappear, thinking I don't want to see you."

Al's eyebrows knitted together in sympathy and he felt his chest getting heavy. "I won't," he said quickly, to regain his composure. "Sensei, that's not why at all. I'm sorry if you thought I was avoiding you. . . ."

"It's all right Al, it's all right." She sighed. "Yes, everything will be all right now, since I have you again, won't it? If only just this one time, I've gotten to see you. And maybe you'll share some stories with me about Ed that I can trade back to Mustang this time? I may run out of them someday, I'm sure you have many more than me."

Al shook his head, taking her hand in his and holding it tight. "You will never have to worry about that again," he said. "Please come with me, Sensei."

* * *

He had barely made it past the first few chairs when a familiar male figure caught his eye. He was in a clusters of officers milling just at the end of nearest break in the row. Al immediately froze, and in the time before he could make himself move again, they made eye contact.

"What is it. Al?" Izumi asked, peaking out from behind him, but she gained no response.

Alphonse immediately straightened up and shook his head, closing his eyes and taking a breath as his hands fisted.

He stood rooted to his spot, jaw tight, while Hughes approached. It was hard not to run, not to attack, and even harder to not press his face into his jaw and the side of his head to ease the sudden onslaught of remembered pain and fear. He gritted his teeth and did it anyway however, needing to do something other than just staring as the man approached from a small group of officers fifty feet off.

Hughes remained a respectable distance away from him when he stopped, however, out of arm's reach of either of them. He was in a dark suit—not a uniform—Al just barely noticed, and the man looked an appropriate mix of apologetic and grieved.

Neither of them said anything at first. Al bit down the urge to fidget, though he couldn't control breathing harder. The tension tightened his flight or fight instincts, his every thought about the ordeal returning, until he snapped and spat, "I am not dealing with this now."

He whirled on his heels and nearly ran the other direction, though all he ran into was Sig's massive bulk.

"Wait!"

"What!" Al hissed, whirling back. Next to him, Izumi's head whipped back and forth between them. "You gonna tell me what to do? You know, you have some nerve _coming _here—"

"I came because They wanted to come," Hughes said, tone neutral. He swept one hand to the side, indicating behind him.

Al frowned and looked around Hughes's body to see Gracia and Elysia, standing in dark blue dresses with the officers, still conversing.

"They wanted to see what you'd say," he continued. "I did, too."

Al took in a breath, uncertain, but the hate overcame. He ended up cultivating a seething glower in Hughes's direction, but not directly at his face. "It'll be a shame I never get to see them again," he decided on, eyeing them distrustfully.

". . . _Why?"_ There was more than a little trepidation in his voice.

"_You'll be there_," Al spat. "You—"

"I resigned," Hughes said.

"...Oh." Al raised an eyebrow. "Did He _accept _it?"

Hughes took a deep breath. ". . . I'm not sure yet."

_I knew it._ Al shook his head. _I would never demand that your life be ruined, but._

"You tried to kill me, Hughes. Twice."

"_What?"_ Izumi cried.

"And with what happened with Havoc I would accept nothing less than resignation but . . . ," he continued on, but he found himself gaping for words. Al threw his hands out to the side, at a loss. "Why the hell couldn't you _trust _me?" he pleaded. "I _know_ that people can change, I _know _I don't even know you or the way you work, but—You couldn't even trust me for _one _second?"

Maes nodded, worn and tired. Izumi had moved slightly behind Al, but was in such a position that she could throw him to the ground quickly or intercept an attack from around his shoulder more quickly than he could. Hughes did his best to ignore it. He gestured with an open, if heavy, hand.

"I wasn't thinking straight, honestly. That's all I can offer you that takes responsibility for what I did. But if you really want to know why. . . ?" Al only scowled harder, so he continued, "No one could stop you if I was wrong."

"You could've tied my hands to walls, Hughes, I can't do anything when that happens, no matter what."

Hughes nodded, and definitely sounded like he didn't want to defend himself. "If," he said slowly, "you didn't have strength like . . . that thing did. Which you made."

"_Ed_ made it," Al corrected with a deadly edge. He would admit that he couldn't throw stones and expect nothing back, but truth be told, all _his _interrupted transmutation would have done was _kill _them. "And the Fuhrer has apologized for taking _those_ six years of my life away from me," he added, terse and accusatory. "I guess in retrospect _you _trying to kill me and _not _succeeding doesn't seem too bad then, is that what you're saying?"

"Not at all—"

"Then what are you saying? What did you come over here for? I really appreciate the attack of PTSD right before I have to make a speech in front of hundreds of thousands of people, I really do." He threw up his hands, and his breath shook. "You know what, Hughes, I would love to forgive you, but I _can_not be a saint purely for the hell of it for you. I _cannot _let words go unsaid because I _know _I'll never get another good chance to say them and I don't want to lose any. more. of the good years we could have, so I'm just gonna say it."

"What?" Hughes wondered.

One hand on his hip, he lifted his red face and disheveled hair and stared into the man's eyes. "I just guess I'm not as much of a son to you as you are a father to me. _That's _what I can't get over."

He stared at Hughes, and the man stared right back at him, eyes widening. His eyebrows arched up, and Al bit his lip in an attempt to keep the water from falling out of his eyes.

"...Wow," Maes said.

Al sucked in a breath, his head jerking back in acknowledgment. "Excuse me."

He walked around Hughes and straight into the path of officers, whom he imagined Gracia had managed to keep from watching him and Hughes, bless her. He strode straight up to her and stopped only about a foot away; Izumi and maybe Sig had stayed behind, having a stare-down deathmatch with Hughes for all he cared. Several officers noticed him at the end of one of Gracia's sentences, and by the time he got there, they all had turned to consider him.

By the time Al stopped in front of them, he had drawn up to his full height, a good six-foot-something, and the intensity of his face was easily overdone because of the hot blood that buzzed him. "Gracia," he nodded to her. He wondered what, if anything, Hughes had confessed to her. And, with more than a little bit of vindictive pleasure, how nervous he could make him by standing this close to his family.

Below him, Gracia smiled pleasantly, but her head tipped unconsciously at his disconcertingly aggressive approach. She held out her hand. "Hello. You are . . . ?"

"Alphonse," he said. He remembered to crack a breathless smile just as he took her hand.

"'Al...'—_Alphonse! _Oh my goodness!"

Al found his hand jerked forward and suddenly his hand was released for arms around his back; she squeezed him tight and rubbed along the line of his jacket. When she pulled back, she did the inspection all mothers did and ended up at last on his face. "I can't believe it. Where have you been all this time? I can't believe it. . . ."

Apparently the answer to what Hughes had told her was "Absolutely nothing." Who knew it was weighing on his conscience that much? Al knew that part of him didn't want to believe it could.

Coming out of his reverie, Al smiled kindly for Gracia. "I know. I might be around more maybe, though. If that's all right?"

"Oh I wouldn't mind at all!" she exclaimed. "If you'll be in town for more than a few nights, let me know and you should come over for dinner. I'll make something for you!" She stopped suddenly, her eyes glazing over as she wondered if she'd ever said that to him before. He saw it flitter across her face plain as day, but the slip was only for a moment; the grip on his arms tightened as she leaned over to his side to someone who only went up to his ribcage.

"Elysia! Do you remember who this is?"

In a pretty navy blue dress to his side, he found the girl, sitting in a chair at the edge of the aisle, attentive to the sudden commotion. She had her shoulder-length brown hair down, stuffed into a jacket, and lost strands of it swayed in the gentle wind as she tipped her head one way, and then the other, at him. Then, she looked at her mom and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry, I don't. Am I supposed to...?"

Gracia smiled apologetically. "Honey, this is Alphonse Elric. Ed's brother, you remember him right?"

Elysia turned back and frowned furiously at him, considering. Al tried not to look as disappointed as he was, but maybe it was for the better all in all. He turned to Gracia. "She _was_ only six—"

"Ah! Armor!"

Al turned back to the source of the sudden exclamation, only to find her pointing at him. "Yes, yes, I remember you! The guy in the armor and the blond guy that came around to play once in a while. You were at that party where I got that giant bear; I remember those pictures! So that's what you look like under there!"

Her smile was as wide as her face, and Al found himself doing a mix of laughing and sobbing. "Yes; yes, that was me."

It was then that Izumi and Sig came up to join them, unnoticed.

"He's one of the brothers that helped deliver me, right mom?" Elysia added.

Al stared. And the tears didn't stop.

"Ah, yes!" She turned to Alphonse, who was shocked at the sudden memories. "That's right, honey. We owe him a great debt."

"Thank you Mr. Alphonse!" Elysia held her hand out for him to shake, and Al did so, numbly. She shook his hand like it was a towel being shook out during spring cleaning.

"Thank you very much!" her high voice professed. "Without you and your brother, mother and I would never have been here."

Al's breath caught in his throat. He immediately looked to Gracia, who had a sympathetic smile on her face.

"Yes, that's right," she said, rubbing her girl's back. "Without you, none of us would be here."

In Al's sudden blush, he looked every direction other than at the women. In his plight, his darting eyes came suddenly onto Hughes, who was sitting in a chair in the sunlight, farther away than where Al had left him, watching all of them. But it was not an alarmed sort of watching, but rather, disconcerted one. He had his hands folded and his cheek atop his knuckles; his elbows braced on his left leg, folded in a 4-shape over his right. He made no move. He probably knew Al was looking at him, but did not try to catch his eye. He simply waited there, watching, heavy.

_So maybe you trust me now?_

Closing his eyes, Al bent down on his knees and wrapped his arms around Elysia.

"_You're welcome."_

* * *

The last person he had to find still eluded him. With Izumi and Sig promising to exact proper justice for him from the generals hovered around and be back in a few minutes, Al stood in the aisle where he expected the last people to be and waited. It was close to the stage; seeing the slats in the wood made him wonder at how he was going to do this speech now—he was going to be dead tired by the time it finally got to be time. He waited with a sigh until he heard a frantic shout. He turned and held his arms out, and in a few moments, a mass of blonde drove into him, arms crushing the life out of him.

Her head rubbed into his chest for a minute, but when she looked up, Al smiled down at her pained blue eyes.

"Winry," he breathed in greeting.

"Al," she cried, softly. "You're really alive. . . ."

Her bottom half leaning into him and her top half tipped back, she stared up into his eyes, searching the coppery depths and then every line and shape of his face, matching its similarities and disparities with her memory. "Oh, Al," she said sadly, pulling one arm out from under his and skirting it up the side of his face, into his soft hair. Her hand pushed through his scalp for a stroke or two, and then, helplessly, she just held a lock of hair, letting her arm dangle on the resistance while she stared at him.

"Why?" she whispered, tears blinking silently down her cheeks. "Why didn't you ever visit? Why didn't you just stay with _us?"_

His shoulders fell and he shook his head. Bending down a little, he enfolded her in his arms and put his head on her shoulder. "I was too ashamed to," he whispered back into her ear, simply. "I didn't want to see the way you'd look at me, the One Left; I didn't want more people than absolutely had to have to be burdened with taking care of Ed. I knew what it would do to you."

Winry scowled and pushed him back with both of her arms, and he moved pliably. "I'm sorry." As he straightened, her hands slipped down to his wrists and held them tighter than necessary. "You can come home now."

She forced the words into his soul, and refused to let him go until he acknowledged it. He stared at the ground, and swung one of her arms to the side nervously. "I know. Thank you."

Then, he frowned. "Do you still live in Resembool?"

She tipped her head. "Of course?"

Al stared back, and then looked aside for a second. _Right, of course..._

They were so different. He was never sure to what extent Winry got over the death of her parents, but he knew it was more than he got over the death of his mother. Her parents had died doing something heroic, something they loved, probably thinking of how much they loved her; their mother died because of them, thinking about their father, a man that had left them and he'd never seen. The Rockbells were tougher than them, they accepted that there were things they couldn't do anything about, and Winry had made life okay for herself without anyone in his family and most of her own. He ran a hand through his hair, and took a breath, looking down at her curious blue eyes.

_Maybe a contented life in a sunny little countryside really isn't something to fear. . . ._

"I missed you, Alphonse," Winry said as he started dreaming about memories of Resembool, treasured times in the snow-covered hills and summer fields alike.

"I love you, Winry," Al said suddenly. To her surprised face, he traced his palm around her shoulder. "Thank you for being willing to help me. And I'm sorry I've made you cry."

"You're . . . welcome." She nodded on the last word, and gave Al a mustering smack on the shoulder, looking like she was trying not to think about his missing brother, because she'd have to ask if she did. "Now, I'm not letting you out of my sight—"

"Will you be joining us in the world of the living for dinner, then, Alphonse?" Pinako announced from beside them, walking up from behind Winry.

"Well . . . um," he said to her comment. She looked as she ever did, as sturdy and old as wood. He brightened a little and caught himself on the rebound. "I may be able to get you into an even better one than where ever you would go, with fine ladies and gentlemen, buffet style."

"Please," she scoffed, tossing her head. "But if Winry wants to go, I'll come too. But, Al. . . ." She tipped her head to the side, and held him in a bit of a snake gaze. "I leave for five minutes to talk to some of my clients and I find out that some of them don't need _automail _anymore. . . . You and Ed wouldn't have something to do with that, would you?"

"Maybe," Al said immediately, looking off.

"Ed?" Winry demanded. _"What _about Ed?"

Al's gentle smiled softened, and without a word, he motioned back toward the curtain. Winry looked past Alphonse, then back at him, and when she saw him nod, she held her breath for a split second. Then she cried, and was bounding behind the stage.

Al turned back to Pinako just as there was a crash of poles and a frantic, ecstatic, female scream, accompanied by a deeper, male exclamation of surprise. He shrugged and scratched the back of his head, looking down at his old neighbor.

"How did you figure it out?"

"She's dumb as a post not to have figured it out by all the talk on the train, at the hotel, on the street. . . . Off in her own world too many times, I think." As Al snickered, she said with keen eyes, "Denial can be a powerful tool."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you when I invited you," Al offered, "but I didn't want to give you heart failure over the phone, and I didn't want to make you have to wait after you found out. I wanted to be there for you, and brother too. Was I wrong?"

"No, I don't think so," she said. "Come here and give me a big hug, kiddo, it's been too long."

Al smiled. As he bent down to do so, he realized that he had never fully appreciated this woman until now, the woman who had anchored their entire worlds.

...What was he going to do when she died?

Forcing through it, thinking it would be something just like this place he was now, he said to her, "It's nice to be home, Granny. I love you."

And finally, he meant it.

"You're welcome kid, you're welcome."

As he looked over her shoulder, he spotted two other individuals toward the center aisle, milling about just where they should be.

Al straightened, offered Pinako the same way he had Winry, and though she turned while he did, she watched his black-suited back as he moved gracefully through the rows of chairs to the couple standing among the crowd of invitees; she watched him until he lifted up his hand to them, and then she turned to meet the boy missing all these years, as well.

She was never again going to let him wander into nowhere, never to be seen again.

* * *

"Oh, my God," Izumi said, her hands immediately going up to her face. Then she turned on Al. "What the hell did you do!"

"Nothing, nothing Sensei! Well, nothing like you're thinking—maybe. Ah!"

Al ducked away just as Ed exclaimed over the commotion. "Sensei! You're here too? And Sig and Granny—Oh Auntie Pinako, glad to see you're still kicking and shriveled!"

"What the hell happened to you beansprout, you grew!"

Ed grinned toothily, and beside him, Winry smiled, putting her hand up to where the top of her head stopped at his neck. "Pretty cool, huh, grandma?" he asked, even though she was still crying.

"Yeah, they finally got a uniform your size, you don't have to be the fashion disgrace of the military now." She smiled wickedly, and tossed her head before giving Ed a gracious embrace. "You look good in that," she said as he released him, dusting off the arms of his sleeves. Conspicuously, underneath her hand she felt a decided lack of metal.

"So what are they going to call you now?" she muttered, amused, to herself.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing."

Ed shrugged and next found Sig, still standing like a stone behind the short woman. He smiled. "Still not as tall as you though, Mr. Curtis!"

When he reached out to shake the man's hand, Sig bodily crushed him into his bulk and somewhere in the hug Ed heard the grating-like mumble of "Nice to see you, Edward. You're alive."

"Yeah, yeah, you too Mr.—Ack—Curtis!" When he was set down back on his feet, it took him a moment to catch his balance.

Ed shook his head out, and it was Winry's hand that came onto his shoulder to steady him. As he watched her, appreciating her warm smile, a thought struck him. "Oh yeah! If you think I look good like that, check this out!"

He dug in his jacket and produced an elaborate silver chain on which the remade flame-shaped medal hung.

"Hm, let me see that," Pinako immediately said as he pulled it over his head and in her hands to see. "Nice detail. Kind of abstract and easy to break, though, I'd think."

"Well. . . ." Ed sucked in a breath and winced. "It's not exactly the type of medal that's supposed to go anywhere other than a glass box. But . . . maybe it's supposed to represent the flame of the heart or soul," he shrugged, rubbing the back of his head, and then fiddling with the tip of his ponytail. "I doubt parliament would allow him to be that tasteless, were it otherwise."

"Let me see it, too, Grandma," Winry said, walking around Ed and bending down next to her. Though she spoke quietly to get out of his way, her hand still found his and entwined with it.

When Ed looked down, she just smiled, a bit sadly. But then she squinted her eyes shut, shook his arm back and forth and pretended to scream. As Ed laughed, embarrassed, at the silent excitement, she rubbed his hand and mouthed, _Welcome home._

Her face practically glimmered as she gave him one last uncontrollable smile and went back to Pinako narrating some things about the medal's construction, though her hand only held on to his tighter.

_I could do that for weeks and it wouldn't express how happy I am to see you again._

"That reminds me . . . ," Ed said as he rubbed Winry's hand back, "Hey, Al!"

"Yes Brother?" Al called from somewhere to his left, sounding a bit strained.

"Come here!" he called, hoping Al would respond something more so that he could track him.

"Yes Brother! Come–ah!–ing!" Al appeared from behind a group of suited spectators apparently watching his sparring match with Izumi, folder and all. He tactfully dodged around Sig at the last minute and made a free sprint toward Ed, Izumi successfully intercepted by her wall of a husband.

"Yes?" he asked, taking a breath and straightening out his hair in a huff.

"Teaching office defense?" Ed quipped.

"I just hope I didn't bust a seam, I borrowed this you know." Al pulled the jacket's hem down and did the suit-arranging fidget. Ed nearly laughed himself to the ground. Al ignored him and blew on his nails. "Still got it though, not a single grass stain to attest to it. But," he said, kicking Ed's overly shiny shoe to get his attention. "What did you want?"

"Ah, yeah." He took Al by the shoulder and turned him away from Winry and Pinako. He bent down in a huddle, his mouth next to Al's ear and his elbow around his neck. "Have you seen how Winry filled _out_! She has huge knockers...!"

Al pulled back in horror, knocking Ed's jaw with his head and then just for good measure hitting him again with his folder. "Ed!" he cried, scandalized, "She is like your sister, what is wrong with you!"

Ed glared, rubbing his injured parts coldly. "No, she's like the girl next door we happened to live with for a while... She can be _your _sister. Isn't that how sisters-in-law work?"

Al fumed and raised his fist.

"Oh, and hey, look!" Ed said quickly, gesturing to the side. "Pinako too! As . . . gnarly and . . . grandma-ish . . . as ever. . . ."

Al glared. "And it better stay that way, too."

Ed put on a nervous smile after he shivered, imagining the woman as anything else along with Alphonse's particularly menacing glare. When had he gotten so good at that?

"So is there anything you _really_ had to say?" Al asked, folding his arms and tapping his foot on the ground.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Ed said, folding his arms as well. "You never wrote them? You never visited? How could you?"

Al stared. They were all standing there, what the hell was he supposed to say to a question like that with no notice? After the innitial shock, he shook his head. "I couldn't go back. What good would have it done? Every time someone looked at me, they'd think of just how much I've lost, how much I failed."

Ed's face turned down into a concerned frown, and he pouted a little. "But there would have been someone to _love _you there."

Al shook his head again, adamant, this time his arms helping the gesture. "I had to love _you._ Would you want your body taking up space in their house for six years? There just wasn't enough love to go around there, trust me. I needed to be on my own. No one would have progressed, living there. Life would have just gone backwards, if it got out of the crush of that weight at all." He put his hand on Ed's shoulder, and focused in on Ed's fully flesh collarbone. "But I can go back now, Ed. We both can, and see what all we have done, all the ways we've grown."

Edward frowned, but bit his lip and stared downward. Rubbing Al's arm, he muttered, "Okay, okay. I think I understand. . . . It just worries me, okay?"

Al nodded, and hugged his brother, putting his face into his chest. "Don't worry for me anymore," he said. "Just love me."

"You are the best brother a man could wish for," he returned softly.

* * *

"All right, we'll be seeing you right afterwards, okay?" Winry said. She hung on the opening in the curtain next to Pinako; Izumi and Sig had already gone through.

"Yes, I'll be out there soon too, don't worry," Ed said from by Al, only ten feet away.

"Oh crap, I hope you don't sit right in front of me, I'll never be able to see," she blurted. And then the facts of the matter struck her, and she cackled.

"Yeah whatever Winry, you better get used to it, it's not like it's going anywhere!"

Al shook his head next to him while Ed twisted his mouth with a huff.

"Bye Al. Can't wait to see you up there!" She waved furiously as Pinako disappeared to the civilian side of the barricades. She hunkered down and made an "ee" sort of noise before blowing the two of them a kiss of good luck and disappearing.

"Well she is something," Ed said after her.

"Indeed." Al rubbed out one of his ears, as if trying to make the ringing go away.

"I wonder if this was the reception I would have gotten had I brought you back home right away?"

"What?"

"Oh . . . nothing." He mumbled, and then turned back to his brother. "There's something I've been wondering," he said, lifting the fire-pendant medal out from his shirt and laying it out in his hand, "Where's yours? Surely, you must have gotten _something _for your trouble in the rebellion?"

"Huh? Oh." A grin split across Al's face with a knowing "Ha ha!" He reached into his suit jacket and produced a large, round, metal piece on a thick strap of blue, red, and gold stripes. "I received the same honor, but it's the "I didn't die" version."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "Oh really now."

"Mm _hm_," he thrummed. "Definitely."

Ed whistled approvingly. "So. Tell me what's going to happen here. Mustang's going to go first, and then he'll call a few other people up, and then you?" Ed asked suddenly.

Al nodded. "Right."

"He never said why he doesn't want me up there while they talk. I mean, it'd be frightfully boring and you can't move a damn or even smile—and I'm sure I'd smile like a goof—but, still, you know?"

Al lackadaisically whapped him with the folder again, this time in the arm. "If you went up there someone would bum-rush the stage, and then there wouldn't _be_ any speeches. The sight of you right now is like a spark in gasoline. Mustang wants someone to actually listen."

Al laughed, and Ed simply rubbed his head, looking abashed. "Yeah, I guess. Not used to stuff like this. On second thought, who needs that glory? Jeez, leave it to someone who did something." Al nodded, though he denied that he'd done anything as well.

"So, can I get you to say something for me?"

"Did you prepare anything?"

"Just a few things, but not really."

"Well, you don't really have to. You're going to get mobbed by everyone for 36 hours afterwards, anyway." He chuckled. "Heck, we won't even need to find you a soapbox now if the great Fullmetal Alchemist has something to preach."

Ed narrowed his eyes, but then tossed his head. "Don't you damn forget it, either, ha!"

To his surprise, no reply came to his bolstering. When Ed tipped his head down and opened his eyes, Al looked sad. "What's wrong?"

Al shrugged, fingering his papers. "This is my time to say something I've been wanting to for a long time, and this is the only time I will ever have to. You can have it all to yourself next year, and every year after. And by then, I hope our wounds will be healed and we will have found our paths, however intertwined they may be."

Ed made a quiet comforting noise, and sought out Al's arm to touch.

"I trust you to do what you need to," he whispered.

Al nodded. "But anyway," he offered instead, pulling a pencil out from his pants pocket, "what is it you want to have them hear? I'll work it in, if it's not, you know, up there with your usual rants."

"Shut up, Al." Ed grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a crouch. "Listen. I have these words that keep going through my head."

* * *

Mustang, generals, and several prominent men and women filed out onto the stage. Several speakers were introduced, and said their peace. Eventually, after his patient waiting in the chill, the huddle of suited speakers behind the scenes with folders and papers, Al's turn was spoken. Throughout it all, he watched his brother—seated in the foremost row—through a slit in the curtain, looking continually more lost and reflective. Al was cued with but a few words, and the silence in which the speaker stepped back to reveal to him his place.

It was so lonely and empty, nothing but the sound of wind and the sight of an empty platform waiting for him.

But he accepted this. His destiny; the inescapable. For, one day, warmth and life would spring forward anew from all of this.

Al ascended the bleach wood stairs, and took his spot. Below him, his brother was staring at the grass, lost and distant. And then he looked up, and when he saw who it was, he smiled.

Al bowed his head, and smiled back, onto the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Central, who have supported us then, and faithfully all these years since, a great thing has happened. We do not always know why or how things happen the way they do, but only when we give up trying on continuing do we truly have an unchangeable 'end.'

"Be aware, what has occurred was no divine providence. It was a man, seeing that something needed to be done and doing it. He wanted to help us merely from the good of his heart and he _did._

"He worked until he gained the power to save us, and then did it with no help from anyone else. He supported himself and created his own future—let us remember that we have one too. I am here today to remind you to think of what you want and grasp it; to not give up until you find what you are looking for. Do not even let yourself _think_ of failure, for if you can see it, you can do it.

"Too long, has grief held us. To accept is to _win, _not to give up. If it hurts, it's because we _fear, _not because we have _lost. _We forget so much of the power inside of us, that pain is temporary, and what our loved ones wanted for us is entirely the opposite of our pain. Though we cannot bring the dead back to life, we have not abandoned them and they have not abandoned us, if we keep the memory of them inside us. They are not dead if we keep thinking of them, what they stood for, who they are. And we will not be less without them, either. We are greater for having had them here.

"We each can become that person who greatly affected our lives, and be that person for someone else. If you need to, in that way, know they will never be wasted. We have that power. Look inside yourself, and you'll see that it's true. If they were something no one else was, let yourself encourage that which they were that was important to you within yourself, so that it is not lost from the world. And if all hope has failed you, remember: tomorrow is always another day to put your best foot forward. It is a day when you can accomplish something truly great, or find that tiny bit of happiness you've been looking for or make it for someone else.

"And so long as you are here, they are here; even if you cannot help yourself, for so long as you are here, you can be a help to someone else.

"The man who gave you all this, I say from him—" Al looked back at Ed and for a long second, merely smiled for him, eyes gentle and warm. Alphonse let out a sigh as he turned back into the sunlight, pain, and tension, the pain of memories leaving him.

He smiled, as he looked again out onto the masses of people waiting to hear his words. "—'To you, my people, I give you this: To be free of the chains of the past, _that _is my memorial to you.' You may have to find your own way, but we are here for you.

"If you can do nothing else, 'Smile, when you remember me.' "

* * *

A/N:

_xoxo, yours truly. Thanks again. It's been a good four years._

_Did you notice that that pendant was in most of the fanart all along? Now, how much stuff do you think has been in this fic all along that you never noticed? I would say reading it again might be fun, but it is Long. Still, feel free to analyze, and have continued fun with it and me, like I will._

_And to all of you that have lost someone, I hope maybe you can feel a little better now, and maybe see a way or two to look at it that you may not have before. That's the whole reason this fic was ever finished. So, thank you._

_Dedicated to my dear Uncle George. May your soul rest in peace within us, or be playing frisbee with whatever inhabits the place you are._


End file.
